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CONSCIOUSNESS 

A STUDY OF THE ABSOLUTE . 


BY 

WALTER NEWELL WESTON, LL M. 

Author of ' ^ 

INTUITION, Its Office, its Laws, Its Psychology, 
its Triumphs and its Divinity. 


Thine own self is changeless, deathless, and in 
expression ever new. 

Inhnite arc the possibilities of thyself. 

—Wisdom of the Ages. 


) 

> 

) 

) 



NEW YORK 

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 

1923 



PRESS OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 
BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
BROOKLYN, N. Y. 


Truth owns no special country as the land 
of its birth; neither the east nor the west can 
claim it as its own. . . . 

No word, no wisdom is lost past recovery. 

Sigh not then over the esoteric wisdom of the 
past; if thou art ready for it, thou shalt receive 
it all. . . . 

It is for thee to perceive as great truths as the 
world has ever perceived. 

If thou wilt thou canst stand where the great¬ 
est have stood. 

—Wisdom of the Ages. 


V 



PREFACE 


The mind is its own place and itself can 
make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven. 

—John Milton. 

In these days of advancing science, dis¬ 
appearing dogmas, crumbling creeds, skep¬ 
ticism of ecclesiastical authority and nu¬ 
merous other indications that many are 
learning to do their own thinking, the doc¬ 
trine of “The Absoluteis steadily mak¬ 
ing its way. This in spite of the fact that 
it offers no set of rules, no defined creed, 
no compact body of members, no imposing 
edifices, no church or other general organ¬ 
ization, no personal authority, no priest¬ 
hood, no official or visible head, nothing 
spectacular, formal or cut-and-dried—^but 
only an individual consciousness of truth. 

It is easier to talk about Consciousness 
than to tell what it is, and no attempt will 
be made here to define it. Those who seek 


Vlll 


PREFACE 


such a definition may well consider the 
following: 

Consciousness is the light of all our see- 

• 9 y 

mg. . . . 

It is the light in which other lights appear. 
. . . While in it the mind sees all other things 
there is no light higher than it by which the 
mind can see the consciousness itself .—Empirical 
Psychology, by Laurens P. Hickok, D,D. 

From this, coming as it does from a 
source purely psychological, it appears 
that there is no faculty of the thinking 
mind higher than consciousness. It logic¬ 
ally follows, therefore, that the conscious¬ 
ness that once obtains the truth as to 
things spiritual, including the realization 
that it is the truth, can be described by no 
less a word than cosmic. 

For an intellectual description of Cosmic 
Consciousness nothing could be more ex¬ 
haustive than the book of that title by E. E. 
Bucke, from which the following excerpt is 
taken: 


The prime characteristic of cosmic conscious- 


PREFACE 


IX 


ness is, as its name implies, a consciousness of 
the cosmos, that is, of the life and order of the 
universe. . . . Only a personal experience of it, 
or a prolonged study of men who have passed 
into the new life will enable us to realize what 
this actually is. 


Pure truth is a self-perfecting study. 
By it we may educate ourselves esoteric- 
ally. For any man the best education is 
always that which he gives himself. This 
book is intended to be informational, but 
also to awaken individuality and afford 
mental discipline. The casual reader may 
get little from it; the diligent student may 
find much, especially when he learns to 
read between the lines. It is not the reader 
of many books who makes the highest 
spiritual attainment, but he who masters a 
few truly spiritual books —or even one. 

Exoteric education fills the mind with 
facts gathered by others. Esoteric educa¬ 
tion finds and develops the sources of truth 
within, truth as to conditions, principles, 
methods, procedure, life, how to deal with 
situations, problems, people; how to do the 
right thing in the right way, at the right 


X 


PREFACE 


time. The instant we start to make our 
mind receptive to High Truth our esoteric 
education has begun. 

One of the most vital factors in the con¬ 
sideration of education is to know what to 
eliminate, what not to study because of its 
lesser importance. The disciples were un¬ 
learned men, but in three years ’ time by the 
contemplation of High Truth to the exclu¬ 
sion of everything else they became edu¬ 
cated to the extent of having their names 
forever placed among the immortals. 

Thought is the basic process by which we 
transform life invisible into visibility. ‘‘As 
a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,^’ is 
oft-quoted Scripture as well as psycho¬ 
logical law. Note that it says, “in his 
heart.’’ That is, in his deepest wells of 
consciousness—not as he often thinks he 
thinks, superficially—^but in the place or 
consciousness of his deepest convictions, 
the place where he thinks as God thinks 
and knows as God knows. 

He who seeks truth for its own sake 
should be willing to awaken dormant fac¬ 
ulties of the mind, for nothing is so search¬ 
ing and renovating as truth. ‘ ‘ I will over- 


PREFACE 


xi 


turn, overturn, overturn,’’ says the 
prophet, and the overturning is to be 

until he come whose right it is”—within 
us. 

There are many who seek to manipulate 
truth, not for the sake of getting freedom 
or even of acquiring more truth, but with 
the expectation of getting things. Ever the 
loaves and fishes are an incentive to exer¬ 
tion. 

It does not matter to truth whether we 
believe it or not—it is truth just the same. 
Burnell says, “Whether I see it or not, 
whether I realize it or not, the truth 
Some persons seems to think if they reject 
truth it is thereby annihilated. 

There is a truth for every situation, and 
the remedial truth means health, joy, 
beauty, vigor, love, life, freedom, harmony, 
wisdom, power and satisfaction. 

New Thought, having no defined church 
or creed, no one can precisely define what 
it includes or excludes. This is as it should 
be, otherwise the very freedom which is 
indispensable to individual unfoldment and 
the investigation of a truly spiritual re¬ 
ligion would be lacking. 


XU 


PREFACE 


There are many schools of New Thought. 
Some of these—not all—seek, directly or 
indirectly, to be considered authoritative 
in their teachings, thus treading in the 
time-honored sectarian rut. The rational 
mind loves to say, ‘‘We have the truth— 
all other teachings are spurious.’’ Some¬ 
times the schools say, “Wear our label and 
we will put upon you the seal of our ap¬ 
proval.” Sad as it may seem, they may 
even proclaim, ‘ ‘ Fail to wear our label and 
you shall receive the evidences of our dis¬ 
approval. ’ ’ So far as true spiritual prog¬ 
ress is concerned nothing could be more 
hazardous, for these are but a repetition 
of the insidious sophistry which, in past 
centuries, has wrecked high and lofty move¬ 
ments in the name of deity, and they are 
thus but a legacy of denominationalism. 

The instant a teacher assumes to be an 
authority on spiritual truth that instant he 
yields to subtle personality, for he thus 
lays the foundation for establishing a 
priesthood or its equivalent, under what¬ 
ever name. The history of religions shows 
invariably that whenever the dominating 
motive of the teacher becomes either the 



PREFACE 


Xlil 


establishing or the perpetuation of a priest¬ 
hood with authority the spirit of the teach¬ 
ing declines and is ultimately lost. Osten¬ 
sibly the purpose of all independent 
thinkers is to find absolute truth, and the 
more truly absolute the teachings, the more 
willing is the teacher to let the appeal as 
to what is truth be to the individual intui¬ 
tion; the less the teacher seeks, directly 
or indirectly, to control either the beliefs 
or procedure of the student. Nor will he 
appeal to the prejudices of the student, or 
seek to force him to wear the label of any 
particular school, or to exclude from his 
mind truth coming from any particular 
source. The truly loyal teacher is the one 
who leads the student to lean more and 
more on truth and Principle, and less and 
less on the teacher. The student who leans 
permanently on an organization or a 
teacher simply omits to cultivate the spir¬ 
itual fiber of his own being. So long as 
we keep our inner vision upon I AM and 
Jesus Christ we shall find all necessary 
channels of information open and receive 
all the truth we can assimilate. Truth for 


xiv 


PRFFACE 


authority, but no authority for truth save 
Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God. 

I am therefore not seeking to convert any¬ 
one to my mere personal opinions. If the 
principles set forth here are not sound and 
true, reject them. Nor have I any quarrel 
with the man who disagrees with me. Not 
every one is prepared to accept truth the 
instant it confronts him, for the human 
mind is a subtle thing and filled with 
vagaries and sophistry. 

If these principles are sound; if they are, 
as I believe, based on eternal and immu¬ 
table truth; if they appeal to your inner¬ 
most and deepest consciousness—then in 
Heaven ^s name accept and apply them irre¬ 
spective of anyone’s personal opinions. 
This is a message to him who understands. 

Walter Newell Weston. 

Hotel Commodore, 

New York City, 

March 5,1923. 


CONTENTS 


CBAPTSR FAQR 

Preface .vii 

I. Cosmic Consciousness. 3 

II. “Personality”. 27 

III. The Real Self.36 

IV. “Salvation”.61 

V. Denials. 67 

VI. Certain Spiritual Principles .... 76 

VII. The Sacred Name. 89 

VIII. Unfoldment. 101 

IX. Unfoldment, Continued. 117 

X. The Consciousness of Opulence . . . 131 

XI. Joy .161 

Self-Perfecting Methods. 167 

A Statement of Belief. 179 

Advertisement. 183 


XV 

















i 



t 







I thirst, 0 God, for the great draughts of 
light that flood the upper heavens, and I hunger, 
O God, for the ripe fruitage of the ages. 

Let me drink in the light that leaps from star 
to star, from universe to universe, until every 
chamber of my soul is flooded with unwonted 
light and glory. 

Let the wisdom of the angels and archangels 
appease the hunger of my soul. . . . 

Worlds without number flash upon my vision; 
suns beyond human calculation flash and flame 
along the Eternal Ways. . . . 

As I stretch out my hands the very heavens 
reach down toward me. 

As I lift up mine eyes, lo, the heavens are 
ablaze with spirit. 

Truly may I cry out; all, all that is, is for me, 
the light is for me, and the Voiceless Silence mine 

own! 



—Wisdom of the Ages, 






CHAPTER I 


Cosmic Consciousness 

In the boy Jesus we have an example 
of youth unfolding in consciousness gradu¬ 
ally to the wisdom of the ages. To this 
there is no similitude in all the history of 
time. 

There are many who would like to think 
of this peerless boy as a normal child. 
There is no account of what his traditional 
brothers thought of him or he of them. 
Whether he associated with other boys we 
do not know. Nothing is said as to whether 
he was fun-loving or serious, frail or rug¬ 
ged, a tease, a joker, an athlete, a student, 
but of one thing we may be certain—he 
was a dreamer. And it is fair inference 
that his mother early sensed his unlikeness 
to other boys, and was sympathetic to his 
extraordinary individuality and sayings. 

Aside from the companionship of his 
home he was confronted with a material- 

3 


4 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


istic world, a world with which his interior 
life could have little in common. It is pos¬ 
sible that his sensitive nature was at once 
his protection and the cause of occasional 
mental suffering; his protection in that 
he often discerned the thoughts of those 
with whom he came in contact, and knew 
that it was for him to remain silent; his 
sutfering when voicing truths above the 
material plane or uttering words, though 
perchance of wisdom, he thus evoked the 
derision and even the scorn of those who 
could not grasp his thought, and had noth¬ 
ing within them to respond to his con¬ 
sciousness. 

What a marvelous experience for Mary! 
To hear words of deep significance spoken 
by the child Jesus, the child whom she, 
the mother, had not been permitted to 
name I Imagine her emotions on realizing 
that those sayings, often spoken to the 
surprise, mystification or consternation of 
others, were from the mouth of her son. 
Yet such experiences aroused no pride or 
arrogance within her, but only a deep hu¬ 
mility and an inward and unspeakable 
though mysterious joy. Possibly such were 


COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 


5 


the attributes that fitted her to be the 
mother of this child of the eternities. 

Always we see that which our inner con¬ 
sciousness is ready to see. And when with 
outer eyes we behold that which has its 
counterpart within us we recognize it, how¬ 
ever others see not. Simeon, being both 
just and devout, visited the temple. Hav¬ 
ing had it revealed to him that he should 
‘‘see the Lord’s Christ,” and being duly 
obedient to his intuitions, he there saw 
externally what already existed in his in¬ 
ner vison, and when he saw it he knew 
that he saw it, though it was but a babe 
in appearance. Few there be in these 
materialistic days, who, if they should see 
the Lord’s Christ in bodily form face 
to face would experience any thrill of rec¬ 
ognition. 

It is a subtle but potent law that we make 
spiritual attainment through the simple 
process of recognition and acknowledg¬ 
ment. Simeon’s name was to become known 
to ages yet unborn, for by recognizing and 
acknowledging the truth was he not given 
the unction to declare that, “This child is 


6 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


set for the fall and rising again of many 
in Israel; and for a sign that shall be 
spoken against; (Yea, a sword shall pierce 
through thy own soul also,) that the 
thoughts of many hearts may be revealed’ ’ ? 
Imagine Mary’s emotions as she pondered 
these mystical words at the time of the 
crucifixion. 

Picture too her realization on finding her 
boy after the three days’ search, the boy 
with the marvelous consciousness though 
in age but twelve years, the boy capable 
of both hearing and asking questions of the 
‘‘doctors” and of holding their attention, 
the boy who in some mysterious way had 
already become a man. Notwithstanding 
the startling replies Mary must hitherto 
have had in her association with her son 
her mother love on this occasion asserted 
itself, only in turn to receive a mild re¬ 
proof from him. Had Mary’s understand¬ 
ing been equal to her love it would not 
have been written of her and Joseph that 
they “understood not the sayings which he 
spake to them.” She, however, “kept 
these sayings in her heart” against such 
time as their meaning might be revealed, 


COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 


7 


That we have no official account of the 
life of Jesus for the space of nearly two 
decades following his conference with the 
doctors is often a subject of comment. But 
to consider the Bible as remiss in this re¬ 
spect is unthinkable. Doubtless the reason 
is that were the narrative other than it 
is we should very likely lose our perspec¬ 
tive and yield to a natural though not spirit¬ 
ual inclination to worship the personal 
Jesus. At all events the record is what it 
is and we must therefore accept it as good. 
It is the reasoning mind that seeks per¬ 
sonal facts, experiences, chronology, au¬ 
thority. The spiritual mind seeks realiza¬ 
tion, consciousness, the perception of that 
which is universal and absolute. We are 
here studying not relative but absolute 
truth, which is the only spiritual truth, and 
which is spiritually discerned. 

It is a fair assumption that all the truth 
concerning the visible manifestation of 
Jesus Christ needed for our “salvation” 
is in the Bible. It is for us to acquire a 
knowledge of this truth spiritually, and to 
know that it is only the personal, the un¬ 
real self of us, that clamors for additional 


8 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


facts concerning the man Jesus. It is the 
office of the reasoning mind to analyze, to 
separate, to say that this truth belongs to 
Jesus the man, that truth to Christ the 
Divine. Spiritual attainment is never thus 
made. Spiritual discernment is never sepa¬ 
rating but ever uniting. However alluring 
the by-paths to the contrary our salvation 
must come by the perception of the truth 
wrapped up in the whole divine name— 
Jesus Christ. 

In the life of the visible Christ the first 
event recorded after the lapse of these 
years was his baptism by John the Baptist. 
However significant this of itself it was 
followed by a distinct advance in conscious¬ 
ness, for we are told that “the spirit of 
God descended upon him like a dove.’’ 
From time immemorial the dove has sym¬ 
bolized intuition. Thus we have a record 
of the definite time of the quickening of 
his intuitive consciousness. Not always 
does intuition awaken so positively and to 
the degree that one is given to know the 
definite time, but in the case of the Great 
Master so complete was the awakening that 
the time was unmistakable. 



COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 


9 


Followed then the test that invariably 
comes to every one who experiences an in¬ 
tuitive awakening. Eeason has no inten- 
iton of being dethroned without a struggle, 
and craftily watches for the opportunity 
to plunge us into a wilderness. It seeks 
with its sophistry to lure us from the 
higher path. Ever the fitting reply is, 
“Get thee hence,’’ hut do we always make 
that reply? This answer made positively 
clarifies the mind for a still greater ex¬ 
pansion of consciousness. Thus could 
Jesus presently declare that the kingdom 
of heaven is not of the future hut is at 
hand, a declaration horn of faith and the 
denial of reasoning’s sophistries. 

Has your imagination ever inquired the 
effect upon you were you suddenly to come 
into the consciousness that you possessed 
power over inanimate things so that you 
might, for instance, produce bread and fish 
from the ethers or turn water into wine? 
With the Master there must have been a 
first time for such a revelation. So far 
as the record shows it was at the marriage 
of Cana. 


10 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


There are no schools where one may 
learn to obtain money from the mouth of a 
fish or produce fire which no man’s hands 
have kindled. We have no standards by 
which we may measure either the quality 
or the degree of consciousness which knows 
its own ability to multiply food or walk 
upon the waters. The one who can do 
these things must perforce obtain his gift 
from within—or from above, which is the 
same thing. Certain it is that ere long 
Jesus realizes * a still greater enlighten¬ 
ment, a consciousness of his mastery over 
bodily conditions. So now we find him en¬ 
gaged in his active healing ministry, to 
the wonderment of the ages. Blind eyes 
receive their sight, dead ears their hearing; 
those afflicted with devils are freed from 
them; leprosy, dropsy, and palsy all obey 
his command and instantly cease to be. 
The theory that he came into the realiza¬ 
tion of his cosmic consciousness gradually 
is more tenable than that it opened with 
one vast illumination. With a gradual ex¬ 
pansion it doubtless came as his works 
progressed, in accordance with the spirit¬ 
ual law that “they that do the works shall 



COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 11 

\ 

know the doctrine.’’ In our modern edu¬ 
cational systems, based upon intellectuality 
and not upon spirituality, it is axiomatic 
that ‘‘theory precedes practice,” which is 
perfectly sound upon its plane. Upon the 
spiritual plane, however, the principle is 
the reverse, as is so clearly stated by the 
Master himself. 

As the results of his miracles became ap¬ 
parent, as he contemplated the helpless¬ 
ness of others, their surprise, their joy, 
their appreciation, their consternation, 
their envy or their jealousy, as the case 
might be, imagine the thoughts that must 
have been his. In that ever expanding 
consciousness came an inward assurance, 
a realization of eternal verities—of abso¬ 
lute truth—a consciousness that could say, 
irrespective of the past or the future, “All 
power is given unto me.” 

Doubtless you have many times in im¬ 
agination pictured yourself as an eye¬ 
witness to the miracles of Jesus, perchance 
as the specific beneficiary of his love and 
power, but did you ever put yourself in 
thought in his place on those occasions? 


12 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


Do this, beginning with the marriage at 
Cana. Follow through those miracles in 
sequence, seeing yourself confronted with 
the privilege and responsibility of casting 
out devils or feeding thousands of persons 
with only a few loaves and fishes. Con¬ 
template the necessity of disappearing 
through the multitude, of stilling the 
storm, of facing and overcoming palsy, 
leprosy, insanity, fever, blindness, lame¬ 
ness, deafness—and finall^to be faced with 
the problem of raising the dead. Imagine 
the consciousness that must come, not from 
the mere knowledge that these things were 
theoretically possible to you, but from see¬ 
ing them as fails accomplis as a result of 
your own volition. 

What were the thoughts of the Master 
as for the first time he was confronted 
with what must to him have been merely 
a belief in lack! Was he hesitant or un¬ 
certain! If so the text gives no inkling 
of the fact, and even his reply to his 
mother, though cryptic, was positive. 

The language of the Gospels is terse and 
direct, devoid of redundancy or circumlo¬ 
cution. Doubtless this is because its spirit- 


COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 


13 


ual message is always of the Absolute. It 
contains no message of the relative, of 
doubt, of perhaps. Either the thing was 
or it was not. This is exemplified in the 
story of the celebration at Cana: ‘‘They 
have no wine,’’ “Whatsoever he saith unto 
you, do it,” “Fill the waterpots with 
water,” “Draw now and bear to the gov¬ 
ernor,” et cetera. 

With the realization of the nothingness 
of sin, sickness and the habits of inanimate 
things there ultimately came a conscious¬ 
ness of the nothingness of death. Appalling 
as it might be to you or to me to be con¬ 
fronted with the responsibility of demon¬ 
strating this colossal fact there is no evi¬ 
dence in the record that the Master 
wavered, though at the raising of Lazarus 
his emotions were deeply stirred. Pos¬ 
sibly this stirring was essential for the 
accomplishment of the miracle, though a 
careful reading discloses nothing akin to 
it at the time of the raising of the son of 
the widow of Nain. 

Contemplate the consciousness of Jesus 
as for the first time he was face to face 


14 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


with what must to him have been merely 
a belief in the absence of life. In the la¬ 
conic language of the Gospels it says, 
‘‘There was a dead man carried out.’’ 
Was the Master hesitant or uncertain? If 
so the text gives no inkling of the fact, 
and his address to the mother, though to 
her doubtless puzzling, was positive. It is 
recorded that then to the dead man he said, 
“Young man, I say unto thee, arise,” and 
“He that was dead sat up.” 

Thus far the works that had been done 
by Jesus were of no greater magnitude 
than had been ascribed to other illuminated 
souls. There is, however, no record that 
to the slightest degree he followed in the 
footsteps of any of the illuminated who 
had preceded him so far as being merely 
their student or imitator. On the contrary 
there is every evidence that what he did 
he did from the upspringings within and 
out of the opulence of his own individual 
soul. 

The time came when he was confronted 
with a problem of still greater magnitude, 
a problem in its immensity so colossal as 
almost to be unthinkable, a problem, which. 


COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 


15 


if it had ever confronted any of the great 
ones of the preceding centuries yet still re¬ 
mained unsolved. 

It is easy to say that the man of Galilee 
was the Great Teacher, the world’s Way- 
shower. These terms are accurate but in¬ 
adequate. Jesus Christ was the Great 
Cosmic Link between man and God, God 
and man. It was his mission not merely 
to teach but to demonstrate in fact the 
humanity of God and the Divinity of man, 
and this demonstration must perforce in¬ 
clude not merely the nothingness of sin, 
sickness and poverty, hut of death. And 
it was not enough to raise others from the 
dead—in order to show the absolute noth¬ 
ingness of death he must raise himself 
from the dead. By no less an act could 
he demonstrate to a doubting world the 
truth that was to set it free. 

Do you wonder at his Gethsemanel 

As truly as Thomas Edison is a pioneer 
in the realm of invention, as truly as Chris¬ 
topher Columbus was a geographical pio¬ 
neer, Jesus Christ was a pioneer in the 
soul realm. 


16 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


The essence of pioneering is that it has 
no precedents. Whatever of miracles the 
so-called ‘‘saviors’^ had performed prior 
to the year 1 A.D., none of them had him¬ 
self been resurrected from the dead. So 
Jesus had no maps, plans or specifications 
for his pilgrimage into the unknown. 
Whatever precedents he may have fol¬ 
lowed in his healings or even in his rais¬ 
ings from the dead, he could now follow the 
example of no one in his journey to the 
Great Beyond —and hack —for of preced¬ 
ents there were none. 

With the fullest knowledge that should 
he make this appalling excursion he would 
be the first to do so in all the eternities 
and must make it alone, he entered the 
Garden of Gethsemane. 

The supreme strength and the supreme 
test of every man is in the will. With the 
will one may refrain absolutely from doing 
certain acts, or even thinking certain 
thoughts. With the will one may throw 
his entire energies in a given direction. 
With the will every man makes his choice 
as to whether he will turn to the left or 
to the right. Men sometimes think they 


COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 17 

avoid an issue, and especially a moral or 
spiritual issue, by not choosing, in which 
case they have simply chosen not to choose 
—and the consequence of such choice is 
upon them nolens volens, 

A thinking business man recently re¬ 
marked that every one he knew was seeking 
to avoid God. This is simply a way of 
stating that most persons are seeking to 
express not the divine but personal will. 
By the acceptance of race thought, heredi¬ 
tary teachings and conventionality, and by 
our system of education, we cultivate per¬ 
sonal will, which is an attempt to set up 
another will in opposition to the divine 
will. Whatever the apparent success this 
is never done, for in fact there is but One 
Will in the universe, and that Will is never 
thwarted. From the story of the Garden 
of Eden we learn that man’s cardinal er¬ 
ror is in thinking himself somebody or 
something separate and apart from God. 
The test of the Garden of Eden, like the 
day of judgment, is a continual perform¬ 
ance. It is taking place in the mind of 
every one constantly, for man is ever using 


18 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


his most Godlike gift—the ability to 
choose. From the time of Joshua when he 
said to the Israelites, ‘‘Choose ye this day 
whom ye will serve,’’ to the present day 
the supreme test has often faced every 
man. Upon the result of his choosings 
depends his weakness or strength, his fail¬ 
ure or success, his littleness or his great¬ 
ness. He may not be able to control his 
feelings or his emotions but he may always 
control his will—and thereby his faith. 
For faith is a matter of will. 

Always our greatest battles and our 
greatest victories are in thought— ivithin. 

Of the agony of the one who faced these 
staggering questions—and won—much has 
been written. It is sufficient here to say 
that having chosen the pathway of faith , 
in an unbroken chain since boyhood his 
ultimate choice at the time of his supreme 
test must automatically be as true as the 
needle to the pole. In the last analysis 
there could be no alternative. Every ves¬ 
tige of personality might cease to exist— 
be crossed out—but come what might his 
will must be merged absolutely into the 
Father’s will. Hence the crucial and cli- 


COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 


19 


macteric words, ‘‘Thy will, not mine, be 
done/’ The absolute crossing out of per¬ 
sonality took place at Gethsemane—the 
visible expression of that crossing out at 
Calvary. It is easy to see why some other 
form of execution than crucifixion was 
not selected. The cross had been the sym¬ 
bol of erasure for centuries. The Egyp¬ 
tians and the Chaldeans had used it long 
before, even to the moistening of the 
fingers in making the sign. 

And what is personality? 

Jesus was the first man to recognize to 
the full the Christ of himself. The Christ 
of you is the Self of you that is, that always 
has been, that always will be. It is the 
Self of you that you were ten years ago, 
that you were when you were ten years of 
age, that you will be a thousand years 
hence. It is the Self of you that is un¬ 
changing, because it is your Eeal Self. It 
is this Self of you that is never angry, 
jealous, resentful, discouraged, malicious 
or revengeful. It is this Self that never 
takes otfense, whines, gossips, worries, 
fights, or has its feelings hurt. 


20 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


The self that indulges in these things 
is the selfish or personal self, which is in 
fact the unreal self, the self that ceases to 
be only by means of denials. The truth 
about it is that it is not, but seems to be 
very real. 

By erasing personality Jesus Christ 
identified himself with universality and be¬ 
came the expression, the incarnation of the 
Christ in every man. The personal closes 
the door to the universal, but as we cross 
out personality we gradually merge into 
the consciousness of the larger realm of 
universality. 

Jesus, while talking to the Father face 
to face, said, ‘‘I have finished the work 
thou gavest me to do.’^ 

How could this be true with the cruci¬ 
fixion yet to come? The one answer to 
this is that with the Master of the Ages, 
so far as he was concerned, the crucifix¬ 
ion to oh place then and there —in the Gar¬ 
den of Gethsemane —in thought. There the 
sweating of blood—not at Calvary—there 
the real battle, and there the real triumph. 
As between him and the Father the work 



COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 


21 


which had been given him to do there be¬ 
came a fait accompli, 

Jesus Christ has been said to be the only 
initiate who never failed. All his works 
were not relatively or partially performed 
but were perfect and absolute, all his tri¬ 
umphs were absolute triumphs. Therefore, 
the real arena of struggle and victory be¬ 
ing in the mind, when he, in conscious one¬ 
ness with the Father, said, “Thy will be 
done,’’ all was finished. With God there 
is no time. When the will of the Son and 
the will of the Father became one will the 
thing simply was. 

Henceforth, like an actor playing his 
part, the visible Christ was to appear 
solely for the benefit of mankind. So far 
as he was concerned further procedure 
would be the outpicturing in visible fact 
of that which had already taken place in 
mind. 

The ordeal at Gethsemane over, the 
Master goes calmly forth and talks with 
his disciples. Presently he allows himself 
to be arrested, and even assists at the pro¬ 
cess. He is non-resistant at the trial, and 
indeed at every step of the ghastly pro- 


22 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


ceedings. On the cross, when an incredu¬ 
lous world has done its worst, he says, 
‘‘It is finished.’’ 

What is finished? The visible tragedy 
which has taken place for the eyes and 
the benefit of a material world. And with 
its materialistic eyes the world has come 
to regard the crucifixion as a finality. 
Therefrom it has assumed that the path¬ 
way of salvation is via death and the cross 
and can only eventuate beyond the tomb. 
WThat a conception of a God of omnipo¬ 
tence, infinite love and wisdom! 

It has been said and it seems reasonable 
to believe that had not Jesus momentarily 

I 

lost his cosmic consciousness he could not 
have passed out of the body, notwithstand¬ 
ing its mutilation. We know that life is 
God, and that Jesus’ consciousness of life 
was absolute. That there was an hiatus in 
his consciousness is indicated by the cry, 
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
me?” Awful indeed is the sense of sepa¬ 
ration from God! 

Of all the affirmations used by Jesus per¬ 
haps none is more notable than, “After 


COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS 


23 


three days I will rise again.’’ Thus he 
made a law, a law that must operate auto¬ 
matically when the time should come for 
him to lose consciousness. The diligent 
student of the Gospels finds that this 
affirmation had been repeated in various 
forms and many times during the preced¬ 
ing months. 

On the few occasions that the Master ap¬ 
peared to his disciples following the resur¬ 
rection he gave them a message of deepest 
significance —the power of the name, Jesus 
Christ. Eeference to this message occurs 
in the Gospels as follows: 

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, 
All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth. 

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, bap¬ 
tising them in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Matt. 28, 
18,19. 

These signs shall follow them that believe; 
In my name shall they cast out devils; they 
shall speak with new tongues; 

They shall take up serpents; and if they 
drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them; 
they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall 
recover. Mark 16,17, 



24 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


Then opened he their understanding, that they 
might understand the scriptures, 

And said unto them. Thus it is written, and 
thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from 
the dead the third day; 

And that repentance and remission of sins, 
should be preached in his name among all na¬ 
tions, beginning at Jerusalem. Luke 24, 45. 

But these things are written, that ye might 
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; 
and that believing ye might have life through his 
name. John 20, 31. 

It will be observed that in the versions 
as rendered by Matthew and Luke in em¬ 
phasizing the power of the name, Jesus 
Christ, he did so in the third person, in¬ 
dicating the entire impersonality and uni¬ 
versality of the teaching. 

The lower can never comprehend the 
higher. What presumption it would there¬ 
fore be for one who had not attained cos¬ 
mic consciousness to attempt a description 
of it! We may rest assured, however, that 
whatever cosmic consciousness is, Jesus 
Christ following his resurrection, was its 
embodiment. 


When you are forgotten, or neglected, or 
purposely set at naught, and, without inward 
resentment, you smile—that is spiritual victory. 

When your good is evil spoken of, your wishes 
are crossed, your taste offended, your advice 
ridiculed, and you take it in patient, loving 
silence—that is spiritual victory. 

When you are content with simple raiment, 
plain food, any climate, any solitude, any in¬ 
terruption—that is spiritual victory. 

When you can bear any discord, any annoy¬ 
ance, any irregularity or unpunctuality (of 
which you are not the cause)—^that is spiritual 
victory. 

When you can stand face to face with folly, 
spiritual insensibility, contradiction, persecu¬ 
tion, and endure it as Jesus endured it—^that 
is spiritual victory. 

When you do not care to refer to yourself in 
conversation, nor seek after commendation, when 
you are even willing to remain unknown—that 
is spiritual victory. 


—Author unknown. 





CHAPTEE II 


“Personality’’ 

There has come into vogue among 
American writers on these subjects a some¬ 
what technical meaning to the word per¬ 
sonality. It thus refers to the false self 
—the self which is the result of unduly 
magnifying the personal ego, that self 
which is opposed to the real individuality, 
the divine Self. 

By our thought we have created a realm 
that separates us from the consciousness 
of oneness with our Source. Man reverses 
the law of life and thus acquires an in¬ 
verted view of things. Our whole problem 
is to discover our true relation to the uni¬ 
versal. But we have believed in two minds, 
two powers, two substances, two wills, two- 
ness without limit, until duality has mani¬ 
fested in a multitude of ways, and as a 
consequence at times all the world seems 

27 


28 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


adverse. We have enthroned a false self 
in an unreal realm. 

If you ask why the want, the misery and 
the injustice that appear all about us, I 
answer, personality. All seeking of money 
for money’s sake, all avarice, lust, inordi¬ 
nate ambition, sensuality, all strivings for 
mere human approval—these have their 
origin and dwelling-place in the human or 
personal ego. Our social and political 
fabric is permeated with personality. Most 
men are so steeped in personal conscious¬ 
ness as to be incapable of seeing truth in 
any form except in so far as it works for 
or militates against their own selfish in¬ 
terests. All envy, jealousy, wrath, hatred, 
resentment, malice, evil-speaking—these 
are in and from the personal consciousness 
and are mere appearances of reality. They 
may be classed under the general term 
negatives. How puerile we perceive all 
negatives to be when once we obtain a 
glimpse of the Christ consciousness! 

Assume that your heart, your intuition, 
your inspiration, your faith and your per¬ 
sonal will are in perfect accord and aU 


“PERSONALITY’’ 


29 


traveling in the same direction. This 
makes for harmony, happiness and victory. 
These factors are all constant except per¬ 
sonal will. Let this now set itself up in 
opposition to the others, turmoil and con¬ 
flict within are produced and you become 
a house divided against itself. Your heart, 
intuition, inspiration and faith are all still 
a unit but they seem obsctired because they 
do not fight or resist. 

But personality has no disposition to be 
dethroned without a struggle. It considers 
itself very important and tries to be the 
whole works. It now becomes resistant and 
combative, is entirely willing to kick over 
the table and spill the milk, to sacrifice you, 
your work, your friends and your future, 
and even to risk losses in any direction. 
In its pathway there is no consideration 
for others, no intuition, no inspiration, 
no faith, and it otfers no food for the 
heart for it seeks only its own selfish 
and ruthless will. Its motto is, Buie or 
ruin. 

Personal will is entirely controllable, for 
we have the power of choice, our most God¬ 
like gift. 


30 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


However alluring the exercise of per¬ 
sonal will, it can never thwart but only 
retard the manifestation of the divine will. 
The one given over to personal will loses 
his sense of perspective and adjustment, 
his relation to the divine plan—until 
brought up with a jolt, perhaps too late 
for remedy in this incarnation. Most per¬ 
sons think, speak and act not from Prin¬ 
ciple but from personality, not seeing that 
their way is of all ways the most short¬ 
sighted. This takes them into ‘‘Egypt,’’ 
or spiritual darkness. Living from the 
personal standpoint is as empty as being 
honest from motives of policy. 

In every problem it may be found that 
there is a spiritual principle that applies 
irrespective of personal approval or dis¬ 
approval, or other phase of personality. 
When Principle is adhered to the results 
are always ultimately best for all con¬ 
cerned. To apply Principle habitually is 
to find within us that which sees and acts 
from the divine standpoint. The connect¬ 
ing link between the personal and the 
divine is Jesus Christ. Thus the human 
and the divine in us become at-one. 


“PERSONALITY” 


31 


The personal pathway is the pathway of 
'karma, a doctrine based on belief in cause 
and consequence. Thus arises the belief 
that mankind must in this life expiate the 
errors and wrongdoings of former incar¬ 
nations. A large portion of the world’s 
population is bound by belief in karma, 
with consequent suffering. 

In the Christ consciousness there is no 
time—all is the eternal now —and cause 
and consequence become one, unseparated. 
Jesus Christ came— comes —to break down 
old and substitute new states of conscious¬ 
ness in the individual. Thus karma be¬ 
comes non-existent. 

God-mind gives itself to its creations, 
which evolve independent wills that may 
be used to retard their own ongoing. Many 
have a consciousness of restlessness, of 
unsatisfied longings, they know not for 
what. These are indications of eagerness 
for liberation. 

Do not mistake personality for the True 
Self. The personal consciousness is a 
crystallized consciousness, stagnant, resist¬ 
ant, combative, inflexible. Spiritual con¬ 
sciousness is fluid, non-resistant yet cen- 



32 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


tered, poised, buoyant, tolerant, uncondi¬ 
tioned, of the ‘‘free Spirit.’’ 

The awakening of the Keal Self and 
erasure of personality is neither a pastime 
nor a sinecure. So saturated have we be¬ 
come with arrogance, pride, sensitiveness 
to criticism and all the bundle of nonenti¬ 
ties that cluster about the personal ego 
that in attempting to reverse the process 
it sometimes seems as if we had under¬ 
taken the impossible. The human ego is 
so filled with sophistries, whims, vagaries, 
fallacies, conceits, distortions, illusions, 
inconsistencies and absurdities and is so 
set in its determination not to be de¬ 
throned, and so ingenious and subtle in its 
antics to prevent any diminution of its hold 
that it has appropriately been dubbed 
“the monkey mind.” A few positive vic¬ 
tories, however, expose its nothingness and 
pave the way for real attainment, com¬ 
pared with which nothing is so worth 
while. 


Only when man withdraws himself from all 
that belongs to the outward and centers his 
whole life and thought upon that which is more 
than shadow, more than blazing sun or world 
teeming with expressions of life, shall the soul 
be flooded with music whose notes are the vibra¬ 
tions of the light ineffable. 

I would introduce thee to thy real self—the 
one very few in the world are acquainted with. 

Thou hast lived so far away from thyself that 
thou hast become acquainted with its feeblest 
expressions. . . . 

Dost think the works of art beautiful ? Genius 
hath produced them all. 

And what is genius but the awakening of 
thyself ? 

Sleep and the world sleeps with thee; awake, 
and the world echoes and re-echoes the voiceless 
song of the soul. 


—Wisdom of the Ages. 

















CHAPTER III 


The Real Self 

There is only one Being. Yon are that 
Being. I am that Being. As truly as the 
ocean drop, if it could speak, might say, 
I am ocean, so you and I may say, I am 
that Being. In saying this from the divine 
standpoint there is neither assumption nor 
sacrilege. To assert otherwise is in fact 
to deny the God within. But the personal 
ego cannot say, I am that Being. For it 
to attempt to do so is disintegrating. 

‘‘This is the acme of perfection,’’ says a 
famous writer, “to know that you yourself 
are the Supreme Being.” 

‘‘I said, Ye are gods, and all of you children 
of the most High. ’ ^ 

Jesus himself referred to this from the 
Old Testament, in his teachings. 

35 


86 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


Man is God individualized^ but many a 
man lives a relatively colorless existence 
and has never individualized himself—be¬ 
come “centered’’ in consciousness—be¬ 
cause he has lost his sense of relation to God 
and humanity. Jesus was the most indi¬ 
vidualized man that ever lived because he 
recognized to the full the Christ of him¬ 
self. In absolute consciousness he could 
say, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” By 
the recognition of the I AM of yourself 
and the acknowledgment of the Christ of 
yourself you may thus bring into manifes¬ 
tation your own peerless individuality, and 
do the work that has awaited you since the 
beginning of time. In that work is limit¬ 
less self-expression, adequate compensa¬ 
tion, and joy unspeakable. But you must 
pay attention to God and his Christ. 

The Self to which I refer is the I AM 
of you. Its name is I AM and its quality 
is perfection. Anything that can say of 
itself I AM is divine. You may not have 
known this (ignorance is the cause of all 
our suffering and woe) but as you read 
these words I am sure you feel an inner 
and intuitive response to their truth. When 


THE REAL SELF 


37 


you learn who and what you really are • 
your Eeal Self will have taken possession, 
not only of your thinking consciousness 
but of your body, your world (the realm 
in which you live) and will transform them 
into a new heaven and a new earth. Health 
will be yours, prosperity will be at your 
command, friends will seek you, victory 
will crown your efforts, joy, harmony and 
satisfaction will be at your disposal. 

You will recall that when Moses had 
been in the high place symbolically men¬ 
tioned as ‘Hhe mount’’ and had been in 
the presence of the burning bush that was 
not consumed, and had listened to the 
voice of God whom he did not see—then 
it was that he inquired whom he should say 
to the children of Israel had sent him to 
deliver them out of all their bondage. He 
was told I AM sent him—I AM THAT I 
AM. Also he was informed, “This is my 
name forever. ’ ’ Study the mystic meaning 
of these things. 

From the above is it not clear that when 
you say, “I AM” you are making use of 
the name of the divinity of yourself? 



38 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


Therefore you should never in thought or 
speech follow that name with a word which 
is untrue of God, as for instance, ‘‘I am 
sick,’^ ‘‘I am tired,’’ “I am poor,” ‘‘I am 
a failure.” Never deny the perfection of 
the I AM or its attributes. To do so is to 
deny the divinity of yourself, which Divin¬ 
ity is seeking to express through you the 
health, strength, beauty, success, joy and 
life which are true of Itself. 

Many fail to “find themselves” because 
of false ideas of self. Such ideas are 
usually based on self-depreciation or self- 
condemnation—the two great negatives 
that retard our ongoing. In God these are 
non-existent. 

Because there is no self-condemnation 
and no self-depreciation in God and be¬ 
cause your Eeal Self is God, there is that 
in you in which there is neither self¬ 
depreciation nor self-condemnation. Con- 
template that Self. 

There is no division in God. God being 
all there is, with what may we divide him ? 
He is divisible only by himself. The quo- 


THE REAL SELF 


39 


tient is One, the number that stands for 
God. 

The first words of the first verse of the 
first chapter of the first book of the Bible 
are, ‘‘In the beginning, God.^’ In the last 
chapter of the last book of the Bible it 
reads, “I am Alpha and Omega, the first 
and the last, the beginning and the end.’’ 

It matters little whether we consider 
these words as signifying first in time or 
first in order; in either case they are truth 
absolute. The entire Bible is a compen¬ 
dium of information on the fact that God is 
all there is. 

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; 
If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. 

If I take the wings of the morning, and 
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; 

Even there shall thy hand lead me and thy 
right hand hold me. Psalm 139. 

Some years ago a certain Dr. M. un¬ 
dertook to give a course of lectures in an 
eastern city. At the opening he drew two 
circles on the blackboard. In one he in¬ 
scribed the word “Man,” in the other the 


40 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


word ‘‘God.’’ Pointing to the blackboard 
he proceeded as follows: “Here we have 
man; there we have God.” Just then one 
of his auditors arose and said, “Pardon 
me, Dr. M., but I submit that there is no 
separation between man and God.” Dr. 
M. could make no answer to this and the 
lecture ended then and there. 

Truth being that which is, and God being 
all there is, truth and God are identical. 
Therefore truth is one and indivisible. 
Whole truth is one truth and the only 
truth. 

Because there is no division in God and 
because your Eeal Self is God, there is 
that in you in which there is no division. 

There is no comparison in God. God 
being omnipresent, with what may we com¬ 
pare him? Being the Absolute One there 
is inevitably nothing by which he may be 
compared. It thus follows that absolute 
truth has no comparison. It simply is. 

That which appears ungodlike is merely 
an appearance. We are to let everything 
not God be nothing to us. 

Because there is no comparison in God 


THE REAL SELF 


41 


and because your Real Self is God, there is 
that in you in which there is no comparison. 

There is no opposite to God. God being 
omnipresent, how can there be any place 
for anything opposed to him? God being 
omnipotent, how can there be any power 
adverse or opposite to him? To answer 
these questions other than in the negative 
is to be “a house divided against itself,^’ 
the effect of which is disintegrating in 
mind and body. 

The very essence of the ‘‘deviP’ is that 
he is not. The very essence of a lie is 
that it is not truth. Therefore it is im¬ 
possible for the mind to conceive of an 
opposite to God or to truth. 

There is no conflict in truth. One truth 
can never conflict with another truth. That 
which appears in opposition to truth is 
nothing. Deliverance comes from bearing 
this in mind. 

Because there is no opposite to God and 
because your Real Self is God, there is that 
in you in which there is no opposite. 

There is no sequence in God. God simply 


42 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


is. With him there is no time, and cause 
and effect are identical. He said, for in¬ 
stance, ‘‘Let there be a firmament,’’ and 
there was a firmament; “Let there be 
light,” and there was light. In the Abso¬ 
lute the word and the manifestation coin¬ 
cide. John says, “In the beginning was 
the word, and the word was with God, and 
the word was God. ’ ’ Because the word and 
God are identical there is no separa¬ 
tion. God is both cause and effect, for God 
is all there is. 

To perceive this truth is to enter the 
borderland of instantaneous demonstra¬ 
tions. Belief in cause and effect results 
in separation in time between the two, for 
thought is creative. 

There is an ancient catch question upon 
the solution of which much time has been 
expended: If an irresistible force should 
come in contact with an immovable body, 
what would occur? The answer is that the 
only irresistible force is God, and that 
nothing but God is absolutely immovable. 
The force and the body would therefore 
be one and the same, and nothing would 
occur. God is not divided against himself. 


THE REAL SELF 


43 


The study of the Absolute solves a multi¬ 
tude of questions. 

Because there is no sequence in God and 
because your Keal Self is God, there is that 
in you in which there is no sequence. 

There is no growth in God. God being 
perfection does not necessitate his ever 
having been imperfect. He and his per¬ 
fection are eternal. God never changes and 
is therefore not coming out of imperfection 
into perfection. 

The soul is that which goes on or per¬ 
sists throughout the eternities. In this 
sense the soul is the divine of us, the God 
in us, the Christ of us. It is thus inaccu¬ 
rate to say that the soul grows. That in 
us which grows or unfolds is our conscious¬ 
ness. 

Because there is no growth in God and 
because your Real Self is God, there is that 
in you in which there is no growth. Con¬ 
template that Self. 

We can neither take from nor add to 
that which is. 


44 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


I know that whatsoever God doeth it shall be 
forever; nothing can be put to it, nor anything 
taken from it. . . . That which hath been, is 
now; and that which is to be, hath already been. 
Ecc. 3,14,15. 

To ascribe to God attributes which are 
not true of him is to worship a false God. 
To ascribe to God the Spirit, to the Self 
of another, or to your own Self attributes 
which are non-existent in fact is to create 
in your life the appearance of those at¬ 
tributes. ‘‘To the pure he will show him¬ 
self pure; to the freward he will show 
himself fro ward.” 

To obtain an accurate idea of the God 
within is to obtain an accurate idea of your 
Eeal Self, for in fact you are that which 
God is. You cannot possibly be unlike your 
Source. 

All imperfections are expressions of be¬ 
lief in separation from God. Why pray to 
a God outside of yourself and thus sepa¬ 
rate yourself in consciousness from both 
God and your heart’s desires! He is 
“nearer than hands or feet.” God thinks 
of you as you really are, pure, true, sin- 


THE REAL SELF 


45 


less, holy, immaculate. Therefore think 
of yourself as God thinks of you. Self 
does not have to become perfect. ‘‘Ye be 
therefore perfect, even as your father 
which is in heaven is perfect,’^ is, we are 
told, the better translation. 

The hiding of the Self is the crucifixion 
of the Christ within. The Self is changeless, 
deathless, and in expression ever new. The 
Self has never “fallen’’ or gone into evil. 
A falsity taught in the name of religion 
does not make it a truth. Nor does the 
Self require experience. To say that we 
must have experience in sin or evil is an 
insult to God. Eeality is not in experience 
but in truth. 

“The highest expression of God is the 
innermost self of man.” Spirit desires us 
to realize and express our oneness with it. 
Therefore abide in the consciousness of 
perfection. To dwell in this consciousness 
is to manifest the perfection which is your 
innermost nature. Be your own, true, 
blessed, immaculate and wonderful Self. 
Thus by contemplation the true Self in¬ 
creases in consciousness, the old decreases, 
as John the Baptist discovered. 


46 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


The edict of the eternities is, ‘^Look unto 
me. ’ ’ This means keeping our inner vision 
fixed upon God and Jesus Christ. ‘‘This 
is life eternal, that they might know thee, 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
thou hast sent.” We are willing to give 
God our time, our services, our influence, 
even our money —everything hut our at¬ 
tention, Yet only hy means of thought 
does the Lord come to man. The Christ 
of him thus becomes the Lord Jesus Christ 
to him. This is the “glorification of our hu¬ 
manity and humanization of God as the 
Lord” individually. Once enjoyed the 
memory of it never fades. Thus “Christ 
in you is the hope of glory,” and of present 
glorification and illumination. 

The contemplation of the Christ as being 
now the divine Self of each of us results 
in vastly different reactions than seeing 
Jesus merely as an historic character who 
lived nineteen hundred years ago. But our 
first recognition of the Christ of ourselves 
is likely to be in a “manger” of our con¬ 
sciousness—we have no room in the grand 
mansion of our thought realm for anything 
so lowly and non-assertive. If, however. 


THE REAL SELF 


47 


we continne to harbor the ‘‘young child’’ 
he grows in stature and wisdom and the 
time finally comes when we must con¬ 
sciously accept or reject all that he stands 
for. Then oftentimes we reason—as did 
Pilate—and, “Eeasoning is the crucifixion 
of Jesus Christ.” On a trivial excuse we 
forego our own divinity—as did Pilate. 
We ignore the feminine of ourselves—as 
did Pilate. The world is just as ready to 
crucify its Messiah as ever it was, and that 
crucifixion is a continuous performance in 
the minds of millions. 

But should we cease to reason and let 
come what will into our consciousness, 
then,— 

“Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is 
given; and the government shall be upon his 
shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonder¬ 
ful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, the Everlast¬ 
ing Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase 
of his government and peace there shall be no 
end.” 

In the Absolute there is no time, thus 
the child may immediately become to us 
the Mighty God and the Everlasting 



48 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


Father. Such is the illumination and glori¬ 
fication of him who fearlessly swings open 
the doors of his consciousness to that which 
is, always has been, and always will be. 

Begin therefore, this day, not merely to 
find no fault with yourself but to praise 
the divine Self of yourself and of your 
neighbor. That Self is the Self which is 
without sin, is not subject to conditions, 
is already well and prosperous, is superior 
to all sects, all problems, all difficulties. 
I would introduce you to your Eeal Self, 
the Self to which nothing is impossible. 
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Self of you 
and of every man, and ‘^liveth in and for 
you.’’ 


What were yesterday thine infirmities may 
become to-day the source of thy strength. . . . 

He who entertains the truly religious life and 
takes pleasure only in things spiritual has already 
become immortal. . . . 

Some will ever choose the longer way that 
leadeth at last to the truth; while others per¬ 
ceive the open way that leadeth straight as an 
arrow flieth to the coveted goal. 

It is not necessary for them who perceive the 
truth to linger in the valley because the many 
are not ready for the journey that leadeth to 
the heights where peace dwells. . . . 

Fear not to trust the power within that with 
ceaseless urge presses thee ever onward. 

Know then your oneness with the Infinite, 
and claim the royal birthright that is thine in¬ 
heritance. 


—Wisdom of the Ages 



















CHAPTER IV 


“ Salvation 

There are many who perceive that 
prayer is not for the purpose of overcom¬ 
ing the reluctance of God, but for changing 
our consciousness that we may know the 
truth and how to take that which is already 
ours. In this light the matter of salvation 
becomes simple—we are merely to lay hold 
of the truth. This was affirmed when the 
Master said, ‘^The truth shall make you 
free.’’ Therefore we are prone, with 
Pilate, to ask. What is truth? The answer 
is that truth is that which is, as contra¬ 
distinguished from that which is not. 
Merely obtaining the truth, then, consti¬ 
tutes our salvation. 

It is apparent that by denying error and 
affirming truth we come into the conscious¬ 
ness of that which is, and are delivered 
from that which is not. Freedom comes 
by perception. Perceiving that God sees 

51 



52 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


US as perfect constitutes our salvation. 
The elimination of disease and evil consists 
in the perception of the fact that they have 
been eliminated all the time. ‘ ‘ Before they 
call, I will answer.’’ This is touching the 
Fourth Dimension, for it is seeing as God 
sees. Nothing but perception will ever 
liberate us from experience, and the spir¬ 
itually-minded know that much experience 
is like play to a child. A boy at birth is as 
much his mother’s son as ever he can be, 
but his perception and consciousness of the 
fact is an ever-unfolding one. 

Whatever God’s salvation is, it is “the 
same, yesterday, today, and forever,” for 
God never changes. Salvation is therefore 
like the day of judgment, a continuous per¬ 
formance. Whatever the truth in Jesus 
Christ that is to deliver us, it always has 
been and always will be. 

The question is sometimes asked as to 
what became of the millions who lived on 
the earth before Christ and if they were 
“lost” because of not having had the 
Christ truth. 

It is well to bear in mind that there is 


“SALVATION’* 


53 


no secular proof that such a man as Jesus 
Christ ever walked the earth. In the con¬ 
sideration of our subject it matters little 
whether such was or was not the fact. 
What we seek is the truth for which the 
name Jesus Christ stands. As God never 
changes that truth existed always and 
always will exist. Isaiah caught and em¬ 
bodied the spirit of it in his Fifty-third 
chapter. Turn to it in your Bible and ob¬ 
serve particularly the tenses of the verb, 
To he. Even within the first four lines the 
verb occurs in past, present and future 
tenses. 

• This is because Isaiah is speaking of that 
which exists irrespective of time. With 
God there is no time and his truth is the 
truth of the Eternal Now. There is in fact 
no past, and there is no future—now is the 
only time. Using the present tense only 
we get the spirit of the chapter as follows: 

1. Who believes our report? and to whom is 
the arm of the Lord revealed? 

2. For he grows up before him as a tender 
plant, and as a root out of a dry ground; he 
hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see 



54 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


him there is no beauty that we should desire 
him. 

3. He is despised and rejected of men; a man 
of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we 
hide as it were our faces from him; he is de¬ 
spised and we esteem him not. 

4. Surely he bears our griefs and carries our 
sorrows; yet we esteem him stricken, smitten of 
God, and afflicted. 

5. But he is wounded for our transgressions, 
he is bruised for our iniquities; the chastise¬ 
ment of our peace is upon him; and with his 
stripes we are healed. 

6. All we like sheep have gone astray; we turn 
every one to his own way; and the Lord lays 
on him the iniquity of us all. 

7. He is oppressed, and he is afflicted, yet he 
openeth not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb 
to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shear¬ 
ers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. 

Et cetera. 

Isaiah, being ready for the Christ truth 
and principles, perceived them from 
within, notwithstanding that he lived and 
wrote some seven hundred years B.C. Can 
we question but that all men of those cen¬ 
turies who were ready for High Truth re¬ 
ceived it? 


“SALVATION” 


55 


Some years ago I taught a Bible class in 
a community in which lived a young man 
who stood high in the estimation of his 
neighbors but who was often looked at 
askance by them for the reason that on 
Sundays he went fishing on Lake W., in¬ 
stead of attending church services. After 
a time, however, he surprised us by coming 
to the Bible class. I soon discovered that 
he had a much greater knowledge of High 
Truth than the more regular attendants. 
At an early opportunity I interviewed 
him, with the following result: 

‘‘What speakers on these topics have you 
heard in the city where you formerly 
lived?’’ 

“I never heard these subjects discussed 
before.” 

“What books have you read along these 
lines?” 

“None.” 

“I suppose you obtained your knowledge 
of these principles from the Bible?” 

“I do not know what is in the Bible.” 

“Will you kindly tell me how you ob¬ 
tained your information as to these 
truths?” 


56 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


‘‘If you r^lly wish to know, Mr. Weston, 
1 got it while fishing, Sundays, on 
Lake W.’’ 

It may well be that some of the Master’s 
disciples obtained while fishing their recep¬ 
tivity to truth, their ability to “go into 
the silence,” and their qualifications for 
discipleship. 

Because of the omnipresence of God 
there is no man so isolated but that if he 
is ready for spiritual truth he may obtain 
it, even though he live by himself on an 
island remote from civilization. No man 
is “lost” in the sense that he is in fact 
separated from God except in his belief in 
separation. The more universal the truth, 
the more universally accessible is it. 

The fact that irrespective of time, salva¬ 
tion is, is set forth by Paul in his Epistle 
to the Galatians: 

Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins 
that he might deliver us from this present evil 
world. Gal. 1, 4. 

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of 
the law. Gal. 3,13. 


“SALVATION” 


57 


But when the fulness of time was come, God 
sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made un¬ 
der the law, 

To redeem them that were under the law, that 
we might receive the adoption of sons. Gal. 
4 , 4 — 5 . 

Here we have our redemption referred 
to as a matter of present, past and future. 
Could we ask more? 

Every man has his own theory as to 
what Jesus Christ was —and is. If the sum 
total of all these ideas could he obtained we 
might have a complete concept of the real 
Christ. So universal is he that he may be 
something vital and significant to every 
man—and yet be a different something to 
each. 

Humanity concedes that Jesus Christ 
was the model man, the Divine Exemplar, 
A large portion of Christendom never gets 
much further than this, oblivious to the 
fact that beyond are realms and realms of 
truth and inspiration. 

Vicarious atonement is commonly known 
as a mysterious truth contributing in some 


58 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


manner to our future ‘‘salvation/’ yet 
comparatively few persons could give an 
adequate explanation of it. We have seen 
that Jesus Christ is the connecting link or 
expression of unity between that in man’s 
consciousness which has hitherto been 
separated. He comes to us individually to 
unify the lower and higher, the outer and 
inner, the visible and invisible, the per¬ 
sonal and universal, man and God. This 
is the at-one-ment. 

In mind the vicarious principle is not 
different in essence from the principle of 
forgiveness—it is a giving for—a substitu¬ 
tion, Eeduced to its simplest terms the 
whole process of our salvation consists in 
substituting truth for error. To see this 
is to clarify much that has been obscure. 
The truth makes us free by redeeming us 
from race beliefs. There is a vicarious 
principle of spiritual unfoldment as truly 
as that there is a principle of non-resist¬ 
ance, or that arithmetic is based on mathe¬ 
matical principles. A fundamental fact 
concerning the vicarious principle is that 
spiritual truths are not reasoned out, but 
discerned. We discern spiritual truth and 


“SALVATION’' 


59 


principles by cultivating our spiritual fac¬ 
ulties until they sense spiritual truth auto¬ 
matically. Spiritual faculties are culti¬ 
vated by giving attention to Spirit and the 
things that pertain to Spirit. 

Many healers, usually those young in the 
work, find that while their healing may be 
effective they themselves often take into 
their bodies the illnesses of their patients. 
By prayer a certain revivalist healed a 
large number of persons almost daily, but 
he omitted to inform them that at night 
after his day’s work, he would often find 
himself suffering with the symptoms of 
those he had healed. On many an occasion 
he would pray to a reluctant God (sic) 
until daybreak that he might be delivered 
from the maladies he had thus taken into 
his own body. 

Such instances occur because of working 
with a mixture of truth and error, which 
naturally produces mixed results. 

When a little child bruises its finger and 
appeals to its mother the parent says, ‘‘Let 
Mother kiss it—now the pain is gone.” 
And so it is. The mother knows the noth- 


60 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


ingness of the pain; the child accepts the 
view of the mother—and the healing is 
complete. 

Note that there is a perfect unity of two 
minds, though one is that of a child. The 
child’s receptivity to and faith in the 
mother’s declarations go far toward ac¬ 
complishing the healing. 

The Brahmin woman of India gash them¬ 
selves to take the sicknesses of their chil¬ 
dren. In eastern countries the vicarious 
principle may be said to be recognized as 
an element of natural religion. Elisha by 
this principle raised from the dead the son 
of the Shunamite woman. 

When we say that such-and-such a person 
is ‘‘made the goat” we have an instance 
of modern slang based on the vicarious 
principle. Under the Mosaic law a goat 
was used as an oifering for sin. 

These simple examples may serve to 
illustrate the vicarious principle, the prin¬ 
ciple by which one may take the conse¬ 
quences of another’s wrong—and the 
wrong doer go free. We are not here dis¬ 
cussing the wisdom, the expediency or the 
justice of such a principle; the only ques- 


“SALVATION” 


61 


tion is, Does it exist? The testimony of 
the ages is that it does, though it is much 
more recognized in Oriental than in Occi¬ 
dental countries. 

Gautama Buddha had a knowledge of 
this principle and is said to have been will¬ 
ing to take upon himself the consequences 
of the sins of all mankind, but could not. 
Jesus Christ, with his cosmic conscious¬ 
ness, knew that he had it within him to 
accomplish it —and did it. 

The question that naturally follows is: 
How am I to avail myself of the vicarious 
work of Jesus Christ? 

The answer is simple: By recognition, 
acknowledgment, and appropriation. 

Acceptance is recognition. Take your 
salvation now. But you must take it ‘‘un¬ 
der grace,’’ as you would any other gift. 

It is not flattering to our self-conscious¬ 
ness to acknowledge that we cannot work 
for our salvation and earn it. Here, then, 
comes the subtle test. Who is master, you 
or the “monkey mind”? Often we decide 
what God should wish us to do to earn our 
salvation and proceed accordingly. That 


62 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


this is not the divine teaching, ^4est any 
man should boast, is made clear in nu¬ 
merous instances. ‘‘By grace ye are saved 
through faith, and that not of yourselves; 
it is the gift of God.’’ The denial of per¬ 
sonality and praise of your divine Self 
will now be helpful. By the recognition of 
his divine Self Jesus Christ took the sins 
and burdens of all mankind. By the rec¬ 
ognition of our divine Self and the finished 
work of Jesus Christ we become free. 
“Man gives recognition to God—God gives 
realization to man.” 

To realize that you do not have to earn 
your salvation is often to be free from a 
great burden. Nor do you have to know 
how the saving principle operates. How 
it operates constitutes the miracle. Do not 
be averse to having a miracle performed 
for your benefit. Eemember that God 
thinks just as much of you as of any other 
human being that ever lived, for he is “no 
respecter of persons.” One of the subtle 
forms of personality is the belittleing of 
self, yes, the Divine Self—by ascribing un¬ 
worthiness to it. You are no “miserable 
sinner” or “worm of the dust.” You are 


“SALVATION’’ 


63 


an eternal child of God, a ‘‘Son of the 
Most High.’’ 

Acknowledgment does not so much con¬ 
sist in proclaiming your freedom from the 
street corners as in quietly announcing, 
when occasion calls for it, that you accept 
and stand for the teachings of Jesus 
Christ. This is the “confession that is 
made unto salvation.” By so doing you 
are not boasting of your own worthiness 
or understanding. You are simply an¬ 
nouncing, in faith, where you stand. 

Lady S., of the English nobility, was for 
years in mental torment as to whether 
there were a God. Because of her uncer¬ 
tainty in the matter she could obtain no 
peace of mind. On a certain occasion, 
leaving her home and guests, she went 
alone into the forest in the rear. There 
she cried aloud, ‘ ‘ 0 God, if there be a God, 
reveal thyself to me.” At once she heard 
a voice saying, “Act as if I were, and thou 
shalt know that I am.” This she did 
and obtained the long sought peace of 
mind. 

Herein is the whole secret of appropria- 


64 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


tion; Act as if 1 were and thou shall know 
that I AM, 

The healer who recognizes and acknowl¬ 
edges the finished work of Jesns Christ 
never takes into his body the illnesses of 
others. He sees that for him to suffer for 
the evils of the world or to attempt to 
expiate the sins of others is pnre arrogance 
and assumption. He who sees that all the 
work of redemption is done by Jesus Christ 
and that he has nothing to do hut to take 
his healing and redemption is soonest 
healed and freed. 


Learn to laugh. A good laugh is better than 
medicine. Learn how to tell a story. A well- 
told story is as welcome as a sunbeam in a sick 
room. Learn to keep your own troubles to your¬ 
self. The world is too busy to care for your 
ills and sorrows. Learn to stop croaking. If 
you cannot see any good in the world, keep the 
bad to yourself. Learn to hide your pains and 
aches under pleasant smiles. No one cares to 
hear whether you have the earache, headache 
or rheumatism. 

Don’t cry. Tears do well enough in novels, 
but are out of place in real life. Learn to meet 
your friends with a smile. A good-humored man 
or woman is always welcome, but the dyspeptic 
or hypochondriac is not wanted anywhere, and 
is a nuisance as well. 

Above all, give pleasure. Lose no chance of 
giving pleasure. You will pass through this 
world but once. Any good thing therefore that 
you can do, or any kindness that you can show 
to any human being, you had better do it now. 

—From Club Car, Southwest Limited. 





CHAPTEE V 


Denials 

The student is often unaware how filled 
is his mind with vagaries, misbeliefs, ca¬ 
price, prejudice, exaggerations, supposi¬ 
tions, and personal opinions—in other 
words, with untruths. 

Truth is orderly and sets not only the 
mind but the life in order. As two trains 
going in opposite directions on the same 
track cannot pass each other, so two op¬ 
posing thoughts cannot exist in the mind 
at the same time without a clash. As it 
is difficult to put more into a full bottle, 
so it is difficult for the mind filled with 
untruth to assimilate truth until some of 
the untruths are eliminated. The process 
of mental elimination is called denial. 

No harm can possibly come to anyone by 
right denials and true affirmations, but 
many self-centered persons hesitate to use 

67 


68 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


denials lest they lose something. Such are 
usually in need of assistance but are some¬ 
times unwilling to accept it. 

By divesting ourselves of preconceived 
ideas at variance with truth we open the 
• door to the consciousness of truth. An un¬ 
recognized truth has no influence over us. 
We deny by refusing to repeat errors, or 
to look back, or to accept popular fallacies, 
or to regret, or to contemplate discourage¬ 
ment, foolishness, symptoms, or impurity, 
or to entertain ideas clearly at variance 
with truth, and in countless other ways. 

The teachings of Jesus Christ are re¬ 
plete with denials: 

* ‘ The Sabbath was made for man and not man 
for the Sabbath.’’ 

“Except ye forsake all ye cannot be my dis¬ 
ciples.” 

“I came not to send peace but a sword.” 

“I came not to destroy the law, but to ful¬ 
fill it.” 

“I will have mercy and not sacrifice.” 

“Cast the beam out of thine own eye.” 

“I say unto you, resist not evil.” 

“If any man will come after me let him deny 
himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” 


DENIALS 


69 


^‘Sell all and give to the poor/’ 

thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” 

When a certain disciple inquired as to 
something personal relating to another dis¬ 
ciple the Master said, ‘‘What is that to 
thee? Follow thou me.’’ When some one 
comes to you with gossip, scandal, condem¬ 
nation, foolishness, or tales of woe based 
on behef in evil —What is that to thee? 

The sincere seeker for truth should know 
that the short cut to spiritual attainment 
consists in erasing error from the mind and 
substituting truth. The use of denials and 
affirmations is not “suggestion” or “auto¬ 
suggestion,” but rather a process of de- 
hypnotization. Already we are hypnotized 
with error—our object is to expose the Keal. 
Eace thought is hypnotized thought. Jesus 
Christ was the only absolutely unhypno¬ 
tized man that ever walked the earth. 

Man’s freedom is measured by his cour¬ 
age to deny, his greatness by his courage 
to affirm. Every thinking man lives in a 
realm of ideas, and, consciously or uncon¬ 
sciously, he is constantly rejecting (deny¬ 
ing) certain ideas and accepting—identi- 


70 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


fying himself with—other ideas. Thus in 
his consciousness is a perpetual process of 
separating the “goats’’ from the “sheep.” 

It has been said that the denial is in¬ 
cluded in the affirmation. However seem¬ 
ingly true this is the consciousness of 
the experienced healer often detects the 
peculiar and subtle problems that beset 
those who have denied denials by refusing 
to use them. 

The man who has an old building on his 
land does not attempt to erect a modern 
structure on the same site without de¬ 
molishing (denying) the ancient edifice. 
If in our thought creations we had never 
failed to follow the pattern in the divine 
mind it would then not be necessary to 
erase (deny) but if we seek more perfect 
manifestations it becomes necessary to 
deny positively, because we have hitherto 
created in accordance with personality’s 
limited conceptions. 

Is it not apparent that what we discard 
of useless mental or bodily habits is of 
prime importance? Constantly to be giving 
expression to unnecessary motions of the 


DENIALS 


71 


« 

body, thoughts of the mind or language of 
the tongue is to be carrying so much dead 
weight. Merely to eliminate some of that 
, which is unnecessary is to increase our effi¬ 
ciency. Can we forget absolutely the un¬ 
kind things John or Mary said to us in 
anger yesterday? There is no perfecting 
of the self while harboring thoughts of re¬ 
sentment, jealousy, envy, contempt, resist¬ 
ance, bitterness or regret. 

Healing is wholeness. All healing con¬ 
sists in perceiving the nothingness of the 
negative and the exposure of the Eeal. 
One victory of this kind in your affairs or 
your health and you have the magic wand 
by which you may transform your whole 
life so that ^‘all things become new.^’ 

One of the very best forms of denial is 
to forget—injuries, disappointments, mis¬ 
takes, disagreements—the whole brood of 
negatives pertaining to the past. (There 
is no past.) One of the most useful of 
accomplishments is the acquisition of a 
good forgettery. 

It is entirely possible to become “dead’^ 
to a multitude of things—to the sense of 


72 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


injustice, to self-hood apart from God, to 
fear, criticism, neglect, insult, to old con¬ 
sciousness, to the consideration of the mind 
as conscious, sub-conscious and super-con¬ 
scious, to belief in the reality of evil and 
dis-ease—to everything not of God. This 
is known as ‘Hhe mystical death,” which, 
contrary to natural assumption is not a 
scourge but a joy. It is a release from 
burdens we have voluntarily though per¬ 
haps unconsciously carried—carried so 
long we have ceased to know they were 
burdens. Paul expressed his familiarity 
with this kind of death when he said, “I 
die daily.” The crossing out of negatives 
opens our consciousness to great realiza¬ 
tions of truth and inspiration. Thus we 
learn the meaning of,— 

the cross of Christ I glory, 

Towering o’er the wrecks of time. 

All the light of sacred story 

Gathers round its head sublime.” 


Thy power is infinite; then why be con¬ 
quered by things which are inferior to thee? 

Let them have no place in thy mind. Drive 
them out with higher and worthier thoughts. . . . 
\ •Grieve not over the past and sigh not for lost 
! opportunities. No opportunity that was really 
thine has ever been lost. 

Let the Now be the better on account of the 
past. Rise, oh soul, out of all thy shadows. 

He who spends his time grieving and lament¬ 
ing over the past lets the golden opportunity of 
the Now slip by unnoticed. 

Arise then; be not controlled and swayed by 
phantoms that stretch their hands from out the 
past. Be superior to all experiences, making all 
serve the divine purposes of Spirit. . . . 

Arise! shake off all that impedes thine up¬ 
ward progress. 

Thou art creator of opportunities. 

—Wisdom of the Ages. 


I 





CHAPTER VI 


I 


Certain Spiritual Principles 

There is a 'positive and there is a 'nega¬ 
tive attitude of mind. 

To be positive means that we have the 
consciousness of being greater than or su¬ 
perior to the problem. 

To be negative means that we have a 
sense of being receptive or inferior to, 
or dominated by, the problem or obstacle. 

The anvil is negative to the blows of the 
steel hammer, which, though much smaller, 
is positive to the anvil. It strikes the 
blows. 

If a man makes money in Wall Street 
it is because he is positive to the market, 
which means that some one else is corre¬ 
spondingly negative. Here the negative 
ones are forever known as lambs.’’ Few 
animals are more negative than sheep. 

If the merchant orders the book-agent 

75 


76 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


from his office it is because the merchant 
is positive and the agent negative. If, 
however, the book-agent turns about and 
sells the merchant a book it is because he 
has become more positive than the mer¬ 
chant. 

If Wellington had not been more positive 
than Napoleon he would not have won at 
Waterloo. If in spite of Valley Forge 
Washington had not been more positive 
than Howe the colonies would have re¬ 
mained a British possession. 

When General Grant said, propose to 
fight it out on this line if it takes all sum¬ 
mer,’’ he was positive. When Admiral 
Farragut said, ‘‘Damn the torpedoes! Go 
ahead,” he was positive. 

In their plans to conquer the world 
Kaiser William and his cohorts were posi¬ 
tive. It required long, weary months for 
the Allies to overcome their negative con¬ 
sciousness and become more positive than 
the Germans. 

Joan of Arc was continuously victorious 
so long as she was negative to the “voices” 
only and positive toward her mission, but 
when she became receptive to the material- 


CERTAIN SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 77 


istie minds about her she suffered defeat 
and martyrdom. 

Senator Wells of Kansas was so positive 
that he refused to permit his constituents 
to dictate to him how he should vote on 
a certain measure. Ultimately his vote 
alone on that measure decided that there 
should be no impeachment of Andrew 
Johnson, and the nation was delivered from 
one of the most menacing crises in its 
history. 

Not for one instant of time was Jesus 
Christ ever negative except toward God. 
Therefore in his work and in his realm his 
success was absolute for all eternity. 

The law is that we are to he negative to 
God only. Few persons realize what this 
means. 

To be negative in this sense is to become 
as a little child, the child that reaches up 
its hand in absolute faith, not knowing 
what you are to put into it nor whether 
it will be good or bad. 

To be absolutely negative to God is to 
be absolutely positive to all else, which 
means that we are to ‘‘put all things under 


78 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


our feet/’ that in health, in atfairs, in all 
self-expression we are to be victorious. 
Such is the divine intention. ^‘It is your 
Father’s good pleasure to give you the 
kingdom.” “He that overcometJi and 
keepeth my works unto the end, to him will 
I give power over the nations.” 

Two great creative principles constantly 
at work in life are involution and evolution. 
It may assist in perceiving the meaning of 
these to bear in mind that wall-paper, when 
rolled, is involved; when unrolled, is 
evolved. Thus it is seen that involution 
and evolution are the reverse of each other. 
Through wrong thinking our atfairs and 
lives become involved. By right thinking 
we reverse the process and evolve toward 
freedom. 

The positive is an expression of the 
masculine, the negative of the feminine. 
The balance of the two constitutes mastery. 
Most persons, however, are wrongly posi¬ 
tive and wrongly negative. The study of 
spiritual truth awakens the consciousness 
to a perception of the right positive and 
right negative, thus bringing a conscious 


CERTAIN SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 79 

evolution toward simplicity and illumina¬ 
tion—the reverse of involution’s complica¬ 
tions. 

Herein is a fundamental and eternal 
principle that underlies all self-perfecting 
processes of the thinking consciousness. It 
is a principle as mathematical as addition 
or multiplication, as simple as that two and 
two make four, and is as far-reaching as 
light. It is so simple as to be elusive, 
but is as potent as truth itself. Consciously 
or unconsciously we avail ourselves of it 
daily, and yet did we use it to the maximum 
we should transcend ourselves. 

This principle is applied in every in¬ 
stance in which man overcomes or accom¬ 
plishes anything, whether it be the striking 
of a match or the building of an oceanic 
canal. 

In the realm in which you live, your en¬ 
vironment, your world, your work, your 
play, your earth, your heaven, yes and your 
hell, you are either negative or positive 
toward every prohlem that arises. As we 
may reduce a fraction to its lowest terms, 
so may we reduce our attitude toward 


80 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


every problem to either a negative or a 
positive one. The problem seems moun¬ 
tainous and we stand before it in abject 
helplessness—negative. Then by denials 
and affirmations we declare the truth and 
Presto!—the mountain has become a mole¬ 
hill because of our newly acquired con¬ 
sciousness. 

We should be able to switch instantly 
from the positive to the negative and from 
the negative to the positive. To be able 
thus to play between the two develops 
spiritual tact, skill and diplomacy, recon¬ 
ciles opposites, solves many of life’s rid¬ 
dles, and is most fascinating. 

To the undiscriminating those rightly 
negative may seem weak, but to be rightly 
negative and rightly positive it to attain 
the acme of strength and power. The whole 
sphere of truth opens to him who learns 
the balance between the two. One thus 
skilled may be all self one moment, and 
nothing the next moment, and vice versa. 
To be able to do this is for the mind to 
be flexible and the thought truly creative. 
The Master said, “All power is given unto 
me,” but at another time, “I can of myself 


CERTAIN SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 81 


do nothing.” Herein is a spiritual secret. 
There is such a thing as losing one’s life 
to gain it. 

Positiveness often overtops itself and 
loses by its own self-assertion. Persons 
using denials wrongly or excessively mani¬ 
fest weakness and become habitually nega¬ 
tive. Some Orientals deny good as well 
as evil and become impractical, visionary, 
and easily imposed upon. As a people we 
of America are affirmative, given to ‘‘Yea 
and Amen.” Because of consequent lack 
of balance this leads to much that is de¬ 
plorable. 

To be negative to God is to take on the 
attributes of God, for it is a spiritual law 
that voe 'become like that toward which we 
are negative. 

Every positive attribute of which the hu¬ 
man mind is capable of thinking is an 
attribute of God. Therefore to be negative 
to God is to open our consciousness to the 
life, love, substance, truth, wisdom and 
power that God is. It is to open our con¬ 
sciousness to the Source of peace, faith, 
harmony, beauty, health, satisfaction, pros- 


82 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


perity, joy—everything that goes to make 
life’s perfection. 

No negative idea can ever be attributed 
to God. There is no sin, hate, sickness, 
poverty, evil, lack, ugliness, fear, jealousy, 
resistance, inharmony or death in God; 
consequently by being negative to God only 
we close all channels for the seeing of 
these as realities, and thus to the mani¬ 
festation of them in our lives. 

The teachings of Jesus Christ are that 
God being all there is, he is all the life, 
all the power, all the love, all the good, 
all the wisdom—all that actually is in the 
universe. But the rational mind—person¬ 
ality, with its subtleties—searches to see if 
perchance it may not find life and death, 
power and weakness, good and evil, knowl¬ 
edge and ignorance, opulence and poverty, 
pleasure and pain, love and hate, faith and 
fear, health and sickness, et cetera. This 
is precisely the ‘‘sin” of the Garden of 
Eden—the eating of (identifying with) the 
tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 
The effort of Adam and Eve was to get 
something they thought they did not pos¬ 
sess, though they possessed all there was. 



CERTAIN SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 83 


But as is so often the case when we see 
duality, instead of acquiring any thing they 
acquired a sense of nakedness—in other 
words, of lack. 

The historic value of the story of Eden 
fades into utter nothingness compared with 
it as an account of what is taking place 
daily in the mind of us all when we seek 
a knowledge of good and evil, or ascribe 
power to evil in the slightest degree. Not 
to perceive this principle is to fail to secure 
the most fundamental of all spiritual prin¬ 
ciples, an omission not capable of compen¬ 
sation by all the courses in theoretical, 
applied, empirical, advanced or ‘‘new^’ 
psychology in the universe. But once per¬ 
ceived we have the corner stone of the 
whole structure of spiritual attainment. 

There is an analogy between evil and 
darkness: 

No one studies the laws of darkness. It 
has none. All the power is in the light. 

In precisely the same way no one gives 
us the laws of evil. It has none. 

No one studies the origin of darkness. 
It has none. If darkness is anything it is 
the absence of light. 


84 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


No one gives us the original of evil. It 
has none. If evil is anything it is our belief 
in the absence of good. All the power is 
in the good. 

If you are negative to the thing it mas¬ 
ters you, you are dominated by it, possibly 
you are slave to it. Whether it be debt, 
sickness, failure, a bad habit, the opinion 
of friends, a selfish ambition or what not, 
it is master and you the servant. 

When you become sufficiently positive 
you solve your problem. When you do 
your own thinking, make your own deci¬ 
sions, master your own habits and condi¬ 
tions, and rise above your environment, 
and the things hitherto your master be¬ 
come your servaijt—then you are positive. 
This something that thus expresses its 
mastery is the God in you. 

In the following table we have, with 
more or less accuracy, pairs of opposites 
such as ordinarily exist in mind. Assume 
that we seek to erase from our conscious¬ 
ness, by denial, all the negatives: 


CERTAIN SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 85 


Sickness 

Health 

Sorrow 

Joy 

Poverty 

Opulence 

Vice 

Virtue 

Falsity 

Truth 

Relative 

Absolute 

Disappointment 

Satisfaction 

Failure 

Success 

Evil 

Good 

Death 

Life 

Hate 

Love 

Darkness 

Light 

Time 

Eternity 


Upon the erasure of the negatives our 
table will then appear as follows: 

Health 

Joy 

Opulence 

Virtue 

Truth 

Absolute 

Satisfaction 

Success 

Good 

Life 

Love 

Light 

Eternity 


86 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


As between sickness and health, sorrow 
and joy, poverty and opulence, vice and 
virtue, falsity and truth, criticism and 
praise, the personal and the divine, the 
spiritualistic and the spiritual, et cetera 
—by the absolute erasure of the one (so 
far as ascribing power to is it concerned) 
the other then exists by itself and no longer 
in comparison with anything. 

In other words we have in consciousness 
taken the attribute out of relativity and 
put it into the Absolute. 

It is by this process only that we shall 
ever permanently attain a consciousness of 
the Absolute. 


Lifting the inner eye to Him who is above 
reason lights the two outer eyes to see the world 
in a new aspect, gives the tongue new descrip¬ 
tions of the world and tips the pen with fadeless 
phrases. . . . 

The mystics of all ages have trusted to 
their inward eye. While turning to behold their 
own personal emotions they have wrought out 
no beauty of action or quickening language. 
While directing it toward the Unnamable and 
Undescribable King of kings they have aston¬ 
ished their own age and all ages by their miracu¬ 
lous performances and noble aphorisms. 

—From ^^TJie Sacred Edict/^ by Emma Curtis 
Hopkins. 



CHAPTEK VII 


The Sacred Name 

Is it not apparent that we should learn 
to discriminate between the negative and 
the positive? When we ascribe power to 
sin, sickness, poverty, personality, evil and 
their kind, we are negative but not to God 
—we are simply making ourselves recep¬ 
tive to the manifestation of these in our 
lives. But when we deny such things and 
their power and instead see the reality of 
health, joy, prosperity, peace, harmony, 
success, wisdom, love, life—then we are 
negative to God who is their Source, and 
thus close our consciousness to anything 
adverse. 

We become negative only to God by keep¬ 
ing our inner vision fixed upon God, and f 
our thought saturated with the meaning of 
I AM and Jesus Christ. This awakens 
within us the authority, power and influ- 

89 



90 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


enee sought by all men, and delivers us 
from bondage. Our hells come from being 
wrongly negative. 

* The name, I AM, addressed to the highest, 
wakens the spirit of authority, majesty, unde- 
featable courage, in the breast of the meekest 
and weakest of men. ‘‘I have wrought with you 
for my name’s sake.” 

The name, I AM THAT I AM, brings up 
from the deep wells of hidden strength in all 
men the sincerity, boldness and intelligence of 
leadership, and that originality of action and 
language which have characterized the heroes of 
the ages, whose names have so long lived in 
history that they have become myths. 

That the teachings of Jesus Christ con¬ 
tain in them nothing negative nor any ele¬ 
ment of duality, Paul is the witness in his 
first chapter of Second Corinthians: 

When I therefore was thus minded . . . did 
I use lightness . . . that with me there should 
be yea, yea, and nay, nay? 

Thus quaintly he asks the Corinthians if 

* From “The Sacred Edict,’’ by Emma Curtis Hopkins. 


THE SACRED NAME 


91 


he and his associates had been trifling with 
them by preaching duality and adultera¬ 
tion. He answers his own question: 

But as God is true, our word toward you was 
not yea and nay. 

For the son of God, Jesus Christ, who was 
preached among you by us . . . was not yea 
and nayy but in him was yea. 

For all the promises in him are yea, and in 
him Amen, unto the glory of God. 

The positive mind draws to itself like 
a magnet that which is requisite for its 
self-expression. The mind negative in di¬ 
rections other than to God drops its guard 
and opens the door to negative experiences, 
namely, to loss, injustice, failure, sickness, 
poverty, death. 

Non-resistance is the consciousness that 
there is no life, substance, power or reality 
in evil, and living up to this in word and 
act. God being all there is, there is nothing 
to resist. 

Spirit is a selfless Being. Spirit is non- 
resistant, meek and lowly. It appears to 
be nothing. Because of these qualities 
Spirit is entirely free from attacks of mor^ 


92 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


tality. It is never hurt nor killed. This is 
the manifestation of the divine feminine. 
God is both Father and Mother. The femi¬ 
nine is the stillness, the mirror, the door, 
the place, the mystery. Because of the 
realization that God is all there is, ‘‘no 
weapon that is formed against thee shall 
prosper.’’ That which appears to be in 
opposition is in reality nothing, and to be 
ignored. Thus when the blows come they 
find nothing. 

Assertiveness and combativeness are the 
masculine, silence and non-resistance the ( 
feminine of consciousness. The develop¬ 
ment of the spiritually feminine always 
evokes love. A correspondence to this in 
the material world is the wife who resides 
at home and loses her identity in her hus¬ 
band. Not a little of the modern woman’s 
loneliness and disatisfaction is based on 
her failure to recognize these principles. 

Personality in the realm of the real is 
a minus quantity. To assert the personal 
self is to attempt to make something out 
of nothing, which is always futile and often 
ridiculous. “Let each seek not his own.” 


THE SACRED NAME 


93 


Self destroys itself and saves Itself. In 
the right denial of self you are getting rid 
of that which is in reality nothing. Per¬ 
ceive that ‘‘He that humhleth himself shall 
he exalted/’ and learn the potency of a 
subtle spiritual law. 

By the denial of self the feminine in us 
draws the positive and loses itself in the 
All. In this realization we swing from 
oneness to Allness—from Allness to one¬ 
ness, thus breaking down crystallized per¬ 
sonal consciousness and letting the fluid 
and “free Spirit” act. 

By denial of self we hve in the universal, 
wherein we work for the benefit of the 
whole. We deny self by meekness, lowli¬ 
ness and non-resistance. We awaken to the 
consciousness, not of being ministered 
unto, but of ministering, thus we become 
willing to be servant of all. Jesus washed 
the feet of his disciples, indicating the will¬ 
ingness of Spirit to serve in the most 
menial ways. Spirit can be nothing in the 
realm of appearances, why not we ? In this 
consciousness we can be misunderstood, 
and let it be nothing. We can, if necessary, 
be cursed, and not suffer. We learn the 


94 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


meaning of being free. It is the man who 
is free who has power. By right affirma¬ 
tions we exalt our God-hood. 

In the larger and absolute sense, all that 
ever can be now is, and there is no such 
thing as creative thought. In Genesis we 
are told that ‘‘the heavens and the earth 
were finished, and all the host of them,’^'- 
and God ended the work which he had 
made. Creative thought is simply bringing 
into visibility that which already exists in¬ 
visibly, and the purpose of creative 
thought is to bring the divine idea into 
manifestation. Man therefore never cre¬ 
ates anything—he simply co-operates with 
divine mind and thought to bring into 
manifestation that which already is. 
“There is no new thing under the sun,’’ 
and “that which is to be hath already 
been,” says the Preacher. This is the 
reason why Alexander Bell and Elisha 
Gray could each invent the telephone and 
file an application for its patent the same 
day, and how others have made inventions 
simultaneously. 

Jesus Christ stands for and is the name 


THE SACRED NAME 


95 


of the Principle of the coming into visi¬ 
bility of all that God, the Father, the Abso¬ 
lute aM Uncreate, is in invisibility. The 
Christ Principle is therefore the principle 
involved in all our ‘‘demonstrations/’ 

Now God is infinite, invisible, intangible, 
indefinite, impersonal, and seemingly im¬ 
possible; he is formless, unknown, and 
well-nigh nameless. In and through Jesus 
Christ he becomes finite, visible, tangible, 
definite, personal, possible; he takes on 
form, becomes known, and has a definite 
name. Jesus Christ is therefore the name 
of the Principle by which man takes cog¬ 
nizance of all that the Father is. In other 
words, Jesus Christ stands for the per¬ 
fecting of our consciousness, the making 
complete of our realizations, the healing of 
all our physical and mental shortcomings. 
It is but a step from healing to wholeness 
and from wholeness to holy-ness. We take 
these steps through and by the name Jesus 
Christ. 

God is said to be thinking his universe 
into manifestation all the time. When man 
ceases to interpose his narrow, petty, fussy. 


96 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


insignificant personal will, and consciously 
merges his will into the divine will, he then 
thinks with God and we may say his 
thought is “creative^’ because it is pro¬ 
lific in results and manifestations. By 
thinking as God thinks we simply recognize 
the perfection and wholeness which always 
were—and this is healing whether applied 
to affairs, the body or the mind. The name 
of the one great healing principle of the 
universe is Jesus Christ. The whole world, 
its affairs, its bodies, its conditions, for¬ 
ever awaits and welcomes the one with the 
consciousness of this healing Principle. 

ft 

Also the name Jesus Christ is the 
epitome of all spiritual truth. It is not 
only the one healing and saving principle, 
freeing from all negative conditions and 
manifestations, but it is the repository and 
key to the realization of the Holy Spirit. 
^‘The Comforter, whom the Father will 
send in my name, he shall teach you all 
things. ’ ’ 

It is declared that the only doctrine ever 
taught by the Great Master was the power 
of his name. So fully did the Apostles 



THE SACRED NAME 


97 


realize this power that they called on the 
name without stint or limit. When asked 
in whose name they performed their heal¬ 
ings and other miracles they promptly ac¬ 
knowledged that they did them in the name 
of Jesus Christ. 

So potent is the name that it has been 
said that it cannot be spoken—even pro¬ 
fanely—^without something transpires. It 
is the name that is above every name, the 
name that arouses in men understanding 
and illumination, and awakens in them 
secret depths and vibrant chords of which 
they hitherto were oblivious. 

“In my name/' said he that was slain. “In 
his name, ’ ’ said his disciples. And it is declared 
that they never preached any doctrine except 
the power of his name. This was their Song. 
It is a name as immaculate as the name I AM. 
It always means, God with us. It is the Amita 
Buddha, the Ahura Mazda, the Emmanuel. It 
is that name of the Lofty and Everlasting I 
AM which represents his nearness and imma¬ 
nence. Name above principalities and powers, 
it is the name of newness, of healing and com¬ 
forting tenderness, of the baptism of the Quick¬ 
ening Spirit. 


98 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


It is the name that restores the lost word, 
the now unspeakable name of the Self-Existent 
God. 

—From **The Sacred Edict/* by Emma Curtis 
Hopkins. 


Infinite possibilities slumber in every human 
soul. These are wrought out through many in¬ 
carnations. . . . 

There are many rights, and it concerns thee 
only to know that which is right for thyself. 

Be not troubled by the opinions of men. 
Thine own opinion is of more value to thee than 
that of any other. 

That which is right for thee to-day may not 
be right on the morrow. 

There can be for thee only one right, that on 
which the Now places the seal of its approval. 

—Wisdom of the Ages, 



i > 
> > ) 






CHAPTER VIII 


Unfoldment 

Thoughts are said to be ‘‘things,” but 
there are many kinds of thought, and 
thought that is not vital is not creative. 
Because saturated with truth spiritual 
thought is most creative, for truth pos¬ 
sesses the quality of inevitableness. 

Many are in a rut. For them life con¬ 
tains neither joy nor inspiration. If you 
are in that class, know this; That if you 
continue to think the same old thoughts you 
will say and do about the same old things, 
live in the same old environment, and face 
the same old problems. 

If, however, you vitalize your thought 
with spiritual truth, as sure as the day 
follows the night there will be a revision 
of your life. It is quite possible so to revo¬ 
lutionize your consciousness that you will 
get more out of one than you formerly did 
from five years of living. 

101 


102 CONSCIOUSNESS 

\ 

To obtain results it is not necessary to 
be physically strong, or intellectual, or 
even moral, but it is necessary to pay at¬ 
tention, and to stand. 

In the gymnasium the instructor tells 
one man, because of his ample leg develop¬ 
ment, to exercise muscles above the waist. 
Another receives instructions precisely the 
reverse, the object in each case being to 
bring about a balanced development. In 
our systems of intellectual education little 
is done to ascertain wherein the given in¬ 
dividual is deficient and first strengthen 
that, as one would strengthen the weak 
link of a chain. Many a college graduate 
is sent out into the world with one side of 
his nature over- and another under-de¬ 
veloped. 

The weakest link of that which makes 
up our nature is, for instance, the financial 
one. Such a person is compelled by his 
thought and decisions to undertake the 
cultivation of a financial consciousness 
which will assure him his rightful place 
in the world. There are even college gradu¬ 
ates who become tramps because of their 


UNFOLDMENT 


103 


refusal to learn this lesson—as if they 
could thereby escape God or the lessons of 
which they are in need! 

In our ongoing from sense to soul, from 
the physical to the Christ consciousness, 
by our thought as expressed through de¬ 
sires and decisions we draw to ourselves 
just those experiences and tests that are 
requisite and conducive to our halanced 
unfoldment. We may retard but never es¬ 
cape this process. 

In facing the conditions brought about 
by thought, conscious or unconscious, one, 
by his pride, vanity, mental resistance, 
condemnation or other form of personality, 
fails to meet his test and becomes more 
or less stagnant in consciousness, thereby 
retarding his ongoing. Another, accepting 
his problems non-resistantly and with hu¬ 
mility, declaring the One Presence and 
Power, quickly masters within himself the 
ideas that correspond to the external and 
material conditions, and thus makes sub¬ 
stantial attainment within a comparatively 
short time. To do this habitually is to 
spiritualize thought, affairs, and life gen¬ 
erally. We are to spiritualize our relation- 


104 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


ships, bodies, finances—all that we are. 
To one who has done nothing of the kind 
there cannot be conveyed a fraction of the 
significance and joy of triumph that comes 
by the process. ‘‘The half has never been 
told.’’ The experience and result may be 
likened to the tuning of a piano which has 
hitherto contained a number of jangling 
notes. The tests that come to us, when 
met and spiritually conquered, harmonize 
our character, our affairs and our lives. 

Many have an unconquerable will— 
which sometimes takes the form of a won^L 
Thus the will which should be a splendid 
servant becomes a bad master. When the 
will becomes as determined to make spirit¬ 
ual attainment as it might, for instance, to 
acquire skill at piano-playing, or bridge, 
or tennis, or golf, then results are accord¬ 
ingly. These teachings are for those who 
seek to become victorious over sin, sick¬ 
ness, poverty and other bondage, and to 
express their own individuality, the Eeal 
Self with its harmony, abundance, joy, love 
and life. 

The study of spiritual truth awakens the 


UNFOLDMENT 


105 


ability to discriminate between the unreal 
and the Real. It develops judgment, which 
is seeing the thing in its right relations and 
as it really is, in accordance with the divine 
idea. Judgment is the process of estimat¬ 
ing according to Principle and not accord¬ 
ing to personality or prejudice. Man^s real 
purpose in prayer is to have the judgment 
of God. 

There is no realm of self-expression in 
which we are more subject to our secret 
convictions than the spiritual. Whatever 
truth we inwardly reject or accept is bound 
eventually to picture forth in our lives. 
It is a law that the outer must conform 
to the inner. Every man’s environment 
and associations are therefore the outpic- 
turing of his inner consciousness, however 
distasteful this idea may be to him. Our 
secret convictions determine our ongoing 
and our pace., 

Jesus prayed to the Father that ‘‘those 
that Thou hast given me may be with me 
where I am,” referring to a place in con¬ 
sciousness. 

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the 


106 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


Most High shall abide under the shadow of the 
Almighty. . . . 

Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in 
all generations. Before the mountains were 
brought forth or ever thou hadst formed the 
earth or the world, even from everlasting to ever¬ 
lasting, thou art God. 

— Psalms. 

There is a place in consciousness where 
we see as God sees, and know as God 
knows. This place is attainable through 
persistent faith, meditation and consecra¬ 
tion. This is ‘‘praying without ceasing,^’ 
and “dwelling in the secret place.’’ This 
place is the rock-consciousness, the “rock 
that is higher than I,” and the “rock of 
our salvation.” 

When you are faced with a difficult situ¬ 
ation and are seeking to apply spiritual 
principles, know this; It is a certainty that 
you would not he confronted with your 
problem were there not in you that which 
is greater than the problem. It is not so 
much your duty as your privilege and your 
glory to find that something, express it, 
and thereby put the problem “under your 


UNFOLDMENT 


107 


feet/’ Having won one victory of this 
kind you will then he in training for still 
greater triumphs. 

Probably more persons fail in the appli¬ 
cation of spiritual principles by not being 
sufficiently steadfast than for any other 
reason. Many stop just short of victory, 
like the man who bored fifteen hundred 
feet to get water—and then gave up. 
Another dug the well fifty feet deeper and 
found water in abundance. 

Faith means steadfastness. ‘‘Be ye 
steadfast, unmovable.” Every condition 
is at some point waiting to be turned into 
manifest perfection. Spirit in you knows 
that point. If you are still enough and 
sufficiently in earnest it will be made known 
to you. The healing of a situation is simply 
the showing forth of that which is. 

At such times of testing we are often hit 
at our weakest point. It is an ancient say¬ 
ing that until he becomes spiritually awak¬ 
ened every man is under bondage to one of 
“Four A’s,” — Amativeness (the affec- 
tional nature). Ambition, Acquisitiveness 
and Approbativeness. 

Doubtless the Master had in mind bond- 


108 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


age of the affections when he said, ‘‘Call 
no man on earth yonr Father,’’ and “Who 
are my mother and my brethren?” In¬ 
stances of bondage to amativeness in its 
various forms may be seen all about us and 
readily recognized. 

Shakespeare expressed certain ideas in 
regard to overweening ambition when into 
the mouth of Cardinal Wolsey he put the 
following words: 

Cromwell, I charge thee fling away ambition; 

By that sin fell the angels; how can man then, 

The image of his maker, hope to win by it ? . . . 

Had I but served my God with half the zeal 

I served my king, he would not in mine age 

Have left me naked to mine enemies. 

—Henry VIII, Act III, Scene ii. 

The governor of a certain state was 
authorized by his legislature to appoint the 
members of a commission which was to 
expend an appropriation of several million 
dollars for public improvements. The pro¬ 
posed improvements were against the in¬ 
terests of one of our big financiers, who 
informed the governor that he desired 
certain men, whom he mentioned, to con- 


UNFOLDMENT 


109 


stitute tho commission. These men were 
appointed against the wishes of the legisla¬ 
ture, and ultimately its intentions were 
largely nullified. The governor’s weak¬ 
est point was acquisitiveness and he could 
not bring himself to act contrary to the 
wishes of the financier lest he be injured 
in his personal finances. 

Excessive approbativeness is perhaps 
a distinctively feminine characteristic, 
though men are by no means free from it. 
We all know the person who can brook no 
reproof or criticism, no matter how lov¬ 
ingly administered, without becoming re¬ 
sentful, unreasonable, or even hysterical, 
and very likely impossible to deal with. 
No real spiritual progress is attainable by 
the person thus abnormally sensitive, nor 
until this God-given faculty is mastered. 
It is a wonderful servant but a heartless 
taskmaster. Abnormal approbativeness is 
like the sharp note in the piano—a discord 
is sounded whenever a chord is struck in 
which it is involved. Because of excess in 
this respect some women suffer untold tor¬ 
ments. Belief consists in the contempla- 


110 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


tion of such ideas as, seek the approval 
of God only,’^ and, ^‘Whom the Lord lov- 
eth, he chasteneth,^’ thus learning to real¬ 
ize that human approval or disapproval 
are relatively of little importance. ‘‘God 
loves me and approves of what I do,’’ is 
a most helpful formula if not used in justi¬ 
fication of a wrong. 

When by belief in the power of lies or 
criticism we become negative we open the 
door and invite in all manner of adverse 
conditions and experiences, with conse¬ 
quent disintegrating effect upon ourselves. 

Praise is spiritual, being simply a de¬ 
scription of the real, the divine, that which 
is. Criticism is an attempted description 
of the unreal, the negative, that which in 
fact is not. Criticism on the part of others 
is without power so far as we are con¬ 
cerned unless we ascribe power to it, thus 
falhng into the trap set by the critic. This 
is the suggestion of making something out 
of nothing, the original mistake of trying 
to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowl¬ 
edge of good and evil. There isn’t any 
such fruit. No one gets anywhere by de¬ 
scribing evil or searching for its laws. 


UNFOLDMENT 


111 


* If you can keep your head when all about you 

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; 

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt 
you, 

But make allowance for their doubting too;... 

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve 
spoken 

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 

Or watch the things you gave your life to 
broken. 

And stoop to build them up with worn-out 
tools,— ' 

Then you will have made a good begin¬ 
ning with these principles. 

If, because of personal opinions or criti¬ 
cism, you weaken in your efforts to be 
steadfast then the ‘‘government’’ of your 
life is upon the “shoulder” of the one 
whose opinions dominate you, and not upon 
the shoulder of the “Counsellor, Mighty 
God and Everlasting Father.” We are to 
seek the approval of Spirit only. The one 
who is subject to either censure or praise 
is a candidate for voluntary crucifixion. 
There is a consciousness that is above con¬ 
siderations of gain or loss, praise or dis- 


* From “ If,” by Rudyard Kipling. 


112 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


praise. With William Lloyd Garrison say, 
“I solicit no man’s praise; I fear no man’s 
censure. ’ ’ 

To be dominated by any one of the four 
A’s is to be in bondage. The only real 
and permanent healing is a spiritual heal¬ 
ing. By consecrating our entire faculties 
and gifts to Spirit, by becoming negative 
to God only, by spiritualizing our whole 
being, emancipation will be found from 
that which hitherto has bound. Not with¬ 
out, but within, is the cause of all our bond¬ 
age, irrespective of the sophistries of the 
‘‘monkey mind” to the contrary. No man 
may become intemperate by the contempla¬ 
tion of God, but any man may become in¬ 
temperate by the contemplation of one of 
God’s ideas to the exclusion of'God, no 
matter how meritorious be the idea itself. 

If you are earnestly striving to live 
spiritual ideas you will have enough of 
truth to apply to any problem that faces 
you provided you are faithful in your 
silent denials and affirmations. For in¬ 
stance, you take, in faith, a position in con¬ 
sciousness in advance of anything you have 


UNFOLDMENT 


113 


attempted hitherto. Do not think you will 
not he tested. It is as if some unseen 
power asked, ‘‘You have said so and so; 
do you really mean it ? ’ ’ It must have been 
on some such occasion that Job said, 
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in 
him.’’ Paul well refers to such an ordeal 
when he says, “Having done all, stand.'^ 
The man who is right in his principles and 
knows enough to stand may become the 
storm center of a situation but his victory 
will be full of compensations. ‘ ‘ The battle ’ ’ 
is not yours, but “the Lord’s.” “Ye shall 
not have to fight,” but you do have to 
stand. Such a procedure can only be based 
on faith, but faith is the most creative 
thing in the world. If you weaken there 
is very likely an adulteration, a mixture 
of the old and the new. If, however, you 
stand to the truth of the One Power and 
Presence then It alone manifests and you 
have your “demonstration.” This may 
be preceded by a feeling of utter helpless¬ 
ness, but our feelings and emotions do not 
constitute our Eeal Self. Also, “When I 
am weak, then I am strong,” and, “Under¬ 
neath are the everlasting arms.” You are 


114 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


dealing with extreme tests, remember. The 
blacker the appearance, the nearer the 
victory. ‘‘Darkest is the hour just before 
dawn, ’ ’ in many a spiritual triumph. Then 
it is as if some unseen power said, “Well, 
if you really mean what you say, have it 
your own way ’^—and your victory mani¬ 
fests, “not by might, nor by power, but 
by my spirit.’’ 

“He who perseveres to the end shall be 
saved.” 


If ye stay in shadows it is because ye will 
to do so. The sunlight is as much yours as 
anyone’s. Then arise, Oh royal soul! and claim 
it as thine own. 

That which is really thine no one can take 
from thee. Thou mayest be deprived of chattels 
and lands, for these were never really thine own. 

But the fruitage of spirit, the results of many 
experiences, thine inheritance from the ages, is 
thine forever, and none can deprive thee of 
it. • • . 

From all around thee Nature stretches out 
her hands encouragingly, and from above all 
power is showered upon thee. . . . 

Out of thine own sphere thou art hampered, 
cramped and besieged by forces, powers and in¬ 
fluences that impede thy onward progress. 

In thine own sphere thou art the ruler. Even 
the stars, nebulae, universes lay their tribute at 
thy feet. 


—Wisdom of the Ages. 





CHAPTER IX 


U NFOLDMENT —Continued 

On certain islands off tlie coast of Maine 
are persons who have never visited the 
mainland, though long since having arrived 
at years of maturity. Many are bom, live 
out their allotted years and die without ever 
seeing a railroad train or trolley car. It 
is not difficult in our imagination to con¬ 
trast the consciousness of these people 
with, for instance, that of certain men in 
New York City, who, by reason of their 
automobiles, though living in a region of 
railroad cars practically never ride in 
them. 

There are those whose consciousness is 
based on a love for the beautiful, at the 
expense of all else in life. There are those 
whose consciousness reveals itself in per¬ 
petual talk about love, but who are in¬ 
capable of expressing its realities. There 
are those who are seemingly forever con- 

117 


118 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


scious of a chip on their shoulder, so easily 
offended are they. There are persons 
whose consciousness is saturated with ex¬ 
citability and emotion. These may be de¬ 
pended upon to be erratic. There are 
those whose consciousness seems to be 
founded on thought concerning their phys¬ 
ical bodies. They are continually appre¬ 
hensive that something is about to happen 
to them. There are those whose conscious¬ 
ness is devoid of stability. These are easily 
diverted, continually seeking novelty, never 
becoming a glory to any particular cause, 
so easy is it for them to be led away to 
another. There are those who never lose 
the consciousness that they belong to the 
aristocratic and learned and are devoted to 
arts and intellectuality—all of which is 
commendable but not spiritual. 

There is the consciousness of poverty 
and the consciousness of riches, the con¬ 
sciousness of sickness and the conscious¬ 
ness of health, the consciousness of failure 
and the consciousness of success, et cetera. 
But what avails it to spend time in the 
contemplation of any state of conscious¬ 
ness other than the highest. Having once 


UNFOLDMENT 


119 


caught a glimpse of the Christ conscious¬ 
ness all lower planes seem dull and un¬ 
profitable. And like the ever widening 
circles on a mill pond when a pebble is 
thrown into the water, we come into a con¬ 
tinually larger realization of the Christ 
consciousness by mere contemplation of it. 

The higher we get in spiritual attain¬ 
ment, the less there is for us to do; the 
more is done for us. We find ourselves 
less and less under the law of law, and 
more and more under the law of grace. 
If we should attain a perfect realization 
of the Absolute we should perceive that 
there is nothing for us to do but to take 
that which is ours and give expression to 
our Real Self. To leap to this place all 
at once, however, is hardly possible nor 
desirable, and the student of High Truth 
usually feels better satisfied if he has 
definite tasks to perform. 

At least you can stand guard at the door 
of your thinker and promptly eliminate all 
ideas of a negative nature. One of the 
emphatic injunctions of the Master was, 
Watch, In this little word are volumes of 


120 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


significance. Prompt, snappy decisions of 
the mind vitalize it and are most helpful. 
Make it a daily practice to deny, silently 
or audibly, negative suggestions and sub¬ 
stitute for them affirmative ideas. Upon 
these dwell in thought ad libitum. Soon 
your mind becomes obedient to your wish, 
automatically rejecting the negatives and 
becoming saturated with that which is posi¬ 
tive and constructive. When your thinking 
consciousness thus becomes insulated to 
negative suggestions you find life conform¬ 
ing outwardly thereto. Old things drop 
away of their own weight. To ascribe the 
slightest degree of power to the negative 
causes us to react negatively and tends to 
take us out of the absolute consciousness. 

Thought operates either destructively 
or constructively (creatively) all the 
time. Destructive thinking is simply 
the omission of constructive thinking, as 
truly as that cold is the absence of heat, or 
darkness the absence of light. If there is 
no constructive thinking nothing is createdj 
and the absence of that which might have 
been created we call negative, as, for in¬ 
stance, loss, lack, sickness, injustice, fail- 


UNFOLDMENT 


121 


ure. The positive and therefore the cre¬ 
ative mind attracts peace, power, pros¬ 
perity, health, et cetera, while the negative 
consciousness fails to bring these into 
manifestation. Hence we perceive the 
meaning of, ‘‘To him that hath shall be 
given, and from him that hath not shall be 
taken even that which he hath. ’ ’ 

The conscious and intelligent use of 
I AM is creative. When you use your 
thought force by means of the I AM of 
you, you are putting forth creative effort 
to transform your life into what you desire 
it to be, thus making the outer conform 
to your ideals. Therefore train your 
thinker to say, “I AM strong,’^ “I AM 
prosperous,^’ “I AM successful,” “I AM 
victorious,” et cetera. Realize in so doing 
that it is the Divine of you that is 
making these declarations. Realize that in 
the absolute truth of these statements as 
to your Real Self, and your recognition and 
acknowledgment of them, you are bringing 
them into visibility in your world—the 
realm of people and affairs in which you 
live. 

Bear in mind that the statements thus 


122 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


made are without reference to the appear¬ 
ance of the outer or visible world. They are 
thus used not descriptively but creatively. 
You can begin the declarations silently, but 
you will doubtless soon find yourself ex¬ 
pressing them audibly, and conditions will 
change accordingly. 

You will recall that Jesus Christ said, 
“It is your Father’s good pleasure to give 
you the kingdom,” and, “The kingdom of 
God is within you.” This kingdom is a 
realization of what you are, who you are, 
and the infinite resources that await your 
appropriation. However, God cannot give 
you this kingdom until you know how to 
receive it. God never forces himself on 
anybody. When you find the Eeal Self— 
the I AM—of yourself, and place it upon 
its rightful seat of authority so that it may 
command and control your mind, your 
body, your environment—and be obeyed— 
then and not until then will you become 
receptive to the kingdom that it is your 
Father’s good pleasure to give you this 
very moment if you will only know how to 
take it. 


UNFOLDMENT 


123 


What good would a kingdom do you if 
you did not know how to receive it and he 
its ruler? 

Jesus did not say that you have to earn 
this kingdom. If it was to he earned hy 
so much labor at so much per day he would 
have said so, hut such was not the case. 
He said definitely that it was to he given 
us. God’s gifts are always for those who 
know how to receive them, for he is “no 
respecter of persons. ” Now your kingdom 
is what you make it, or, in other words, 
it is as much of truth, love, power, sub¬ 
stance, joy, satisfaction, beauty and life as 
you know how to appropriate rightfully 
—and not what you waste. You have prob¬ 
ably not hitherto realized that your king¬ 
dom is made up of all your inner resources 
of health, vitality, life, ideas, power and 
abilities, conscious and unconscious, but 
such is the fact. The more you learn to 
depend on the creation and manifestation 
of these things by your own thought from 
withinj the sooner will you come into a full 
manifestation of the unlimited potentiali¬ 
ties of the hidden kingdom within you and 
the more perfectly will you express your 


124 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


true, divine, unlimited, royal, immaculate 
and wonderful Self. 

By collective consciousness is meant the 
group consciousness of two or more per¬ 
sons. Jesus said, ‘‘If two of you shall 
agree touching anything and shall ask of 
my Father he will give it to you,” and 
“Where two or three of you are gathered 
together in my name there AM I in the 
midst of you.” Thus we have the sanction 
of the Master that collective thought is 
distinctively creative. 

The thought of two persons working 
unitedly may be illustrated as follows: 

Let the arrows, A and B, respectively 
represent the power and direction of the 
individual thought of E and F, 




UNFOLDMENT 


125 


Draw two lines, ah and he, corresponding 
in length and direction to the arrows A and 
B, and meeting at a point h. 

Draw lines ad and dc parallel to he and 
ah respectively, forming a parallelogram 
ahed. Draw the diagonal, ae. 



The diagonal, ae, will represent the 
power and direction of the eomhined 
thought of E and F, and is known as the 
resultant of the forces represented by the 
arrows, A and B, 

If a third person, G, is working with E 
and F, then let a third arrow represent the 
power and direction of his thought, and 
make a parallelogram with that line and 
the resultant previously found. The second 
resultant will represent the power and 
direction of the combined thought of E, F 
and G, and so on indefinitely. 




126 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


If one of the group is working spiritu¬ 
ally in a practical way (we do not neces¬ 
sarily cease to be practical because we 
become spiritual) then his thought will 
dominate, though the result may not be 
considered successful from a material 
standpoint. But he personally may become 
a storm center in a given situation and 
possess an influence little short of resist¬ 
less. Certain Bible characters illustrate 
this, notably Joseph and Daniel. 

In our politics we may see almost daily 
examples of the result of group thought. 
Every city, state and nation has its col¬ 
lective thought the resultant of which is 
shown in countless ways. The resultant 
of the thought of all the workers for a 
given political end often falls far short of 
what the idealists and genuine patriots 
would have. Nevertheless there is no limit 
to the possibilities attainable by those 
working impersonally for the good of the 
whole. 

In addition to faith and love, praise and 
thanksgiving are potent spiritual prin¬ 
ciples. It is significant that the United 
States stands alone among nations in its 


UNFOLDMENT 


127 


observance of an annual day of thanks¬ 
giving, a feature that plays an unmeasured 
part in lifting to higher levels the con¬ 
sciousness of the emigrant. 

Spiritual thought harmonizes extremes. 
There is a point in consciousness referred 
to in certain Oriental teachings as ‘‘The 
neutral point.’’ In any given case involv¬ 
ing two or more persons it may be de¬ 
scribed as that place at which they all do 
or may express accord or unity. The more 
spiritual the consciousness, the easier to 
find the neutral point. Jesus Christ has 
been called “The Great Neutral,” meaning 
that the Christ in us neutralizes and har¬ 
monizes extremes. 

It is significant that among nations the 
United States has been characterized as 
“The Great Neutral.” This was more or 
less exemplified in the World War and ad¬ 
justments that followed. What these facts 
may portend in the final settlement of the 
world’s chaos may not be predicted, but 
we may rest assured that the collective con¬ 
sciousness of America will play a vital part 
in the process, even though the ordeal be 
strenuous for all concerned. 

































Every man’s career is a miniature history of 
the world. It is said that the unborn child 
within the mother passes through all the stages 
of animal evolution from protoplasm to man. 

So in every life there is a development that 
corresponds to the growth of the whole human 
race. 

In each of us there is an epoch of savagery 
wherein we pass through a phase that resembles 
the life of the cave man. 

In each one of us there are the Dark Ages, the 
Kenaissance, the Reformation, the Declaration 
of Independence, the Great War. 

The world with its successive panics and pros¬ 
perities has its replica in each soul. 

Every man can say, ‘‘I was once a Columbus, 
a William the Conquerer, a slave, a prince, a 
pauper. ’ ’ 

Every consciousness is a little cosmos. 

— Dr. Frank Crane, in Current Opinion. 




CHAPTER X 


The Consciousness of Opulence 

More persons seek spiritual truth with 
the hope of obtaining financial freedom 
than for any other reason except to get 
bodily healing. As prosperity is directly 
dependent on consciousness the consid¬ 
eration of it otfers unlimited scope for 
study. Nothing in our affairs is more 
material than money, nor more requires 
spiritualizing. 

Opulence is a state of mind, and a million 
times more powerful than lack. It must 
first exist within. There is a realm in mind 
where opulence lives as an inexhaustible 
idea. Ideas are therefore of the utmost 
importance, for we are constantly dealing 
in them. A certain corporation paid large 
dividends from the start, yet not a dollar 
was ever paid into its capital stock. Its 
promoters had merely capitalized an idea. 
Opulence comes not because we have earned 

131 


132 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


it but because we have learned to be recep¬ 
tive to it, “under grace.’’ It is not the 
result of thought manipulation for the pur¬ 
pose of getting things, but is the corre¬ 
spondence to a consciousness. 

Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, 
saith the Lord of hosts. Zech. 4, 6. 

The words that I speak unto you, they are 
spirit and they are life. John, 6, 63. 

Every man to whom God hath given riches 
and wealth, and hath given him power to eat 
thereof and to take his portion, and to rejoice in 
his labor; this is the gift of God. Ecc. 5, 19. 

Opulence is a manifestation of the pres¬ 
ence of God. Therefore we should never 
separate God from the thought of abun¬ 
dance. David separated himself from pros¬ 
perity by numbering his army and thereby 
manifested a terrific loss. 

While it is not to be assumed that every 
man may become a Eockefeller or a Carne¬ 
gie, it is the divine teaching that there is 
adequacy for all. What constitutes ade¬ 
quacy is a relative matter, depending upon 
individual consciousness. The psycholog- 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 133 


ical law that applies here is the one that 
reads, ‘ ‘ As ye sow, so shall ye reap. ’ ’ Irre¬ 
spective of how much we possess, if we 
spend onr money with a consciousness of 
lack, we reap lack; if with a consciousness 
of supply, we reap supply, as truly as that 
two and two make four. The question 
therefore is. What constitutes the con¬ 
sciousness of lack and how may we avoid 
it? And what constitutes the conscious¬ 
ness of supply, and how may it be culti¬ 
vated? 

A certain woman was the legal owner of 
real estate to the value of $250,000, yet her 
consciousness of poverty was so great that 
it yielded her no income. She obtained her 
living by taking in washing and doing other 
menial work. 

We think lack by giving to charity 
through the acceptance of somebody’s else 
belief in lack; by taking without making 
adequate compensation; sometimes by 
“bargain hunting,” in the belief that there 
is not enough to go round; by thinldng that 
we are dependent on a fixed income from 
salary, investments, some one’s bounty, 
et cetera. When we do these things we 


134 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


limit ourselves to conditions; when they 
fail ns we are all at sea. We are in fact 
dependent only on Spirit, the One Source 
and Supply, and it is not subject to condi¬ 
tions. We should take our vision otf of 
channels and see the One Source always, 
irrespective of channels. There are count¬ 
less channels, but only One Source. 

Many a man fails to retain suddenly ac¬ 
quired wealth because lacking in the con¬ 
sciousness of opulence. Others, because 
of their consciousness, sometimes have 
riches thrust upon them, like a certain 
Massachusetts man, who, in the early days 
of the Bell Telephone Company, much 
against his will accepted some stock of that 
corporation in payment of a debt and 
thereby became a man of wealth. 

“Deacon’’ White, the famous Jesse 
Livermore, and other Wall street charac¬ 
ters have made (and lost) fortune after 
fortune, for, having an opulent conscious¬ 
ness, they could not be kept poor. 

Colossal fortunes such as those of Car¬ 
negie, Eockefeller, Gould and Vanderbilt, 
attain their size, not because they were^ iu 



THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 135 

the ordinary sense, earned, but because 
some one had a well-nigh absolute con¬ 
sciousness of opulence, whether recogniz¬ 
ing the Source of it or not. The law oper¬ 
ates in spite of failure to acknowledge its 
source, for ‘‘God is no respecter of per¬ 
sons.’^ Spirit is a selfless being, with no 
thought of conferring favors. 

The possession of riches is not to be 
considered a subject of condemnation. 
Such an attitude on our part tends to keep 
us poor. We are to express God^s opu¬ 
lence. One of the surest ways of doing this 
is to praise opulence wherever we see it. 

It is he that giveth thee power to get wealth. 
Deut. 8, 18. 

Both riches and honor come of thee. 1 Chron. 
29, 12. 

I have given thee both riches and honor. 1 
Kings 3, 13. 

Thou shalt have plenty of silver. Job 22, 25. 

The earth is full of thy riches. Psalm 104, 24. 

Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, . . . 
wealth and riches shall be in his house. Psalm 
112, 3. 

The hand of the diligent maketh rich. Prov. 
10, 4. 


136 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


Thine heart is lifted up because of thy riches. 
Ezek. 29, 5. 

Because of possessing material wealth 
some persons have a sense of self-condem¬ 
nation, and think they would be willing to 
part with their possessions if thereby they 
might obtain freedom in consciousness. 
Such often believe in sacrifice, a word with 
a subtle meaning which it is important to 
perceive. Even Abraham was brought 
only to the point of willingness to sacrifice 
Isaac—no sacrifice in fact had to be made, 
nor often does when the thought is right. 
Had the young ruler mentioned by Mark 
been equally willing to give up his riches 
it is a fair assumption that he would sim¬ 
ply have been shown the way to become a 
trustee of his wealth, and to use it bene¬ 
ficially. 

I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the 
knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. 
Hosea 6, 6. 

This was quoted by Jesus, ^‘But if ye 
had known what this meaneth, ‘ I will have 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 137 


mercy and not sacrifice/ ye would not have 
condemned the guiltless.’’ 

In view of the fact that riches, and 
health, and joy, and honor ‘‘are from 
Thee,” what right have we to wish to be 
rid of any of them? The real question is 
as to their use. Because some one else has 
less of joy or health than I is no reason 
why I should seek to eliminate joy or be ill. 
Nor am I doing you any kindness to accept 
your view of lack, any more than I would 
be doing you a kindness to accept your 
view of the reality of disease. Whether we 
see it or not the truth is in the one case that 
there is no lack, and in the other that there 
is no disease. If we proceed on this as¬ 
sumption our faith will open doors to 
supply. To do otherwise is to deny the 
Source of the very supply we crave, not 
only of health but of satisfaction, love, har¬ 
mony and opulence. 

Abraham, who was big enough to have 
the Lord enter into a covenant with him, 
had great riches, as did David, the “Be¬ 
loved of the Lord,” and Solomon his son. 
One can scarcely be called poor who could 


138 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


entertain five thousand persons as his 
guests, or see to it that a fish disgorged 
gold wherewith to pay tribute. Not only 
was the Master’s seamless robe a badge of 
aristocracy, but of wealth. So great was 
his consciousness of opulence that even 
without asking any man’s permission he 
took possession of things of which he had 
need, and no reactions followed. 

There is no condemnation of riches in 
the Master’s telling the ruler, ‘‘Sell what 
thou hast.” His message in each instance 
was always appropriate to the conscious¬ 
ness of the hearer. Jesus perceived that it 
was subjection to belief in the power of 
riches that bound the ruler in conscious¬ 
ness from a realization of High Truth. 
God is the only power. Eiches in them¬ 
selves have no power, as for instance, more 
than one man on the ill-fated Titanic dis¬ 
covered. The power ascribed to money is 
the source of its only apparent power. 

The movies have recently exhibited some 
interesting pictures on the subject of Ein¬ 
stein’s Theory of Eelativity, showing that 
our ordinary conceptions of direction, size, 
motion, force and time are all relative, and 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 139 


that we have few if any absolute concep¬ 
tions of the material world. So it is with 
our ideas concerning money. There is no 
such thing as an absolute dollar, in the 
sense of that dollar having a fixed and un¬ 
changeable purchasing power. With many 
shudders we have in recent years seen even 
the gold dollar shrink in value, and there 
have been occasions, as in San Francisco 
after the earthquake, when money had no 
purchasing power. 

With greater significance our concep¬ 
tion of God and his abundance are also 
relative and not absolute. It is this con- 
ception that keeps us eternally poor. 

Not until our thought regarding money 
has become spiritualized shall we have a 
right and sound consciousness concerning 
supply. At best money is but a symbol. 
To see money itself possessing power is 
indeed to worship a false god and prove 
the saying that ‘ ‘ The love of money is the 
root of all evil.’’ Because of the false 
thought back of their practices men who 
devote their lives to the mere accumulation 


140 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


of wealth seem to shrivel their very souls. 
There is no test of our attitude toward 
money greater than the test as to whether 
it be our servant, or whether it owns us so 
that we are servant to it. This was what 
the Master meant when he said that it was 
easier for a camel to go through the eye of 
a needle than for a rich man fo enter the 
kingdom of heaven. The ‘‘needle’s eye” 
was a small gate in the city wall, not in¬ 
tended for beasts of burden. A camel 
sometimes did get through it, but with dif¬ 
ficulty. 

Men who bow down to the money god 
usually find at some time in their lives that 
they themselves are bound hand and foot, 
either by the loss of all they possess or by 
the humiliation of being compelled to sub¬ 
mit to dictation by the money power. Wall 
street and the banldng interests are the 
most ruthless and arrogant of tyrants, ex¬ 
acting their pound of flesh with merciless 
rapacity, not because each individual 
transaction may not be ethically right, but 
because the victim has in his thought 
ascribed power to money rather than to the 
Source of all supply. 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 141 

Many who do not ‘‘demonstrate^’ finan¬ 
cially would do so if they were orderly, and 
others if they were not habitually dilatory. 
Such should set their house in order by 
more fully identifying themselves with to¬ 
day and its perfection, that is, its oppor¬ 
tunities for self-expression. We do this, 
for instance, by giving thanks that we are 
now in our right place, doing our right 
work, by meeting fully the obligations of 
today, and by putting our whole heart into 
what we do. “Whatsoever thy hand find- 
eth to do, do with thy might. ’ ’ Our present 
work and position will be what we make 
them. If we honor God by honoring our 
work there is no power that can keep from 
us our own. The future and the past are 
alike unknown to the Creator. God is this 
day the Source of all substance and supply, 
and He is this day seeking to ‘ ‘ give you the 
kingdom.” In our Lord’s prayer we this 
day demand daily bread, symbol of all 
supply. 

The student of spiritual truth may well 
note that the alert business man dismisses 
a subject from his mind the instant he is 
through with it, thus increasing grasp and 


142 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


power of mind and enabling his thought to 
be clear for the next thing at hand. Brood¬ 
ing over the past or the future unfits us for 
meeting the responsibilities of today. 

*Wail not for precious chances passed away, 
Weep not for golden ages on the wane; 

Each night I burn the records of the day; 

At sunrise every soul is born again. 

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped, 
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb; 
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead, 
But never blind a moment yet to come. 

Art thou a mourner ? Kouse thee from thy spell. 
Art thou a sinner? Thy sins may be forgiven. 
Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell. 
Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven. 

The question is often asked, How would 
you apply spiritual principles if you were 
penniless? This may be answered by an 
incident in the life of a man, a Central 
American, who had a knowledge of these 
truths. A few years ago he found himself 
not only penniless in New York city, but a 

*From “Opportunity,” by Walter Malone, 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 143 

stranger in a strange land. He obtained a 
small job as a translator. The work was 
skilfully done and was worth three hun¬ 
dred dollars. When his employer had 
looked over the papers he threw a ten- 
do liar bill on the table, saying, ‘‘There, 
that will keep you from starving a few 
days.’’ The foreigner ignored the money 
but picked up the translation and tore it 
into bits, and as he walked out he remarked, 
“If I am to starve I may as well starve 
today.” Had he accepted the ten dollars, 
he would have been believing in lack, but, 
believing in supply, he dared reject it— 
and supply manifested. Almost at once he 
received an offer to represent a South 
American business concern in New York, 
involving the expenditure on his part of 
many thousands of dollars. 

It should be noted that his deliverance 
did not come from an act merely, but from 
a consciousness upon which the act was 
based and of which it was the expression. 
Much so-called New Thought teaching as 
to finances is of the spineless variety and 
therefore not spiritual. Spiritual victory 


144 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


requires spiritual virility. Ever the spirit¬ 
ual life is in the will, paradoxical as it may 
seem. To say, ‘‘Now I will simply leave 
it to Spirit, ’ ^ may only mean that one has 
become negative at the very time he should 
be positive. However commendable it may 
be to trust God to guide our footsteps we 
must not omit to move our feet. The 
spiritual test of finances, as of all else, is 
in the will. In every case it is a safe as¬ 
sumption that the spiritual expression of 
the will is the one that requires faith. In 
the divine will there is never any poverty. 
When the human will and the divine will 
become one will that will is invincible, be¬ 
cause absolute. 


Before there can be manifestation there 
must be faith expressed in action, based on 
belief in supply and not in lack. Some¬ 
times we have to pay something right 
where there seems to be nothing with which 
to pay. But Spirit never requires impossi¬ 
bilities. There is always a supply for 
every demand, and often the blacker the 
appearance, the nearer the supply. At all 
events the solution is at hand and not re- 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 145 


mote in time or place. ‘‘Act as if I were 
and thou shalt know that I AM,’’ applies 
financially as in other ways. Whether the 
act of faith consists of a money payment or 
services, or what not, by it we thus ac¬ 
knowledge the spiritual Source of what we 
have and the “substance of things hoped 
for.” 

Continually to postpone our act of faith 
is to run the risk that our supply will never 
become a tangible reality, but remain in¬ 
tangible, invisible and prospective only, 
like tomorrow that never comes. “Now is 
the accepted time.” “Now is the day of 
our salvation.” 

Our act of faith is never a denial but 
always an expression of our belief in pres¬ 
ent supply. If we are still enough we shall 
know what it is, and if we are then obedient 
we shall cut the Gordian knot that binds us. 

A certain young woman, hearing an ex¬ 
planation of these principles, put a dollar 
and a half—all the money she had—into 
the contribution. She was far from home, 
had recently lost her position, and at the 
moment did not know where to find an¬ 
other. Within ten days she had four offers 


146 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


of employment. Dare poverty and it dares 
not manifest. 

There is a law of financial equilibrium. 
‘‘As ye measure, it is measured unto you.’’ 
We can never sow nothing and reap some¬ 
thing. There are times when to sow noth¬ 
ing is in etfect to deny the very origin of 
that which we now have. To make our 
payment of money or service is to sow 
faith, and faith is the desired thing in its 
incipiency while the essence of faith is the 
will, which is within our control. Not to 
express faith is often to put ourselves 
under the law that “From him that hath 
not shall be taken even that he hath.” This 
is one of many Biblical descriptions of 
states of consciousness. 

There is that scattereth, yet increaseth; and 
there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but 
it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be 
made fat; and he that watereth shall be watered 
himself also. Frov. 11, 24. 

Give and it shall be given unto you; good meas¬ 
ure, pressed down and shaken together, and run¬ 
ning over, shall men give into your bosom. For 
with the same measure that ye mete withal it 
shall be measured to you again. Luke 6, 38. 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 147 

Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and 
ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto 
you; for every one that asketh, receiveth; and 
he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knock- 
eth it shall be opened. Matt. 7, 7. 

Metaphysical workers often teach that 
compensation for their services should he 
on the ‘‘offering’’ basis, and, on the theory 
that Jesus never made a charge for his 
healings, they have rejected the idea of 
fixed fees. Such forget that the Master 
never “passed the hat,” so far as we have 
record, or took up a collection other than 
the twelve basketfuls after the multitude 
had eaten. 

It is apparent to many thinking people 
that there is a screw loose in the teaching 
regarding the offering system as practiced 
by many workers, so far as being founded 
on spiritual principles is concerned. Con- \ 
stant begging and involuntary giving tend 
to cultivate and perpetuate a poverty con¬ 
sciousness. When we shall have attained 
the Christ consciousness to the degree that 
we can take a gold coin from the mouth of 
a fish, or multiply loaves and fishes, it will 
be time to consider devoting ourselves and 


148 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


our lives to the service of others without 
thought of compensation, but as the work 
and the workers are now constituted, the 
worker, by unsound methods far too com¬ 
mon, often simply assists in making him¬ 
self or the member an object of charity. 

Much of the offering system as practiced 
at present is based, not on a consciousness 
of supply, but on the consciousness of lack, 
and many centers exist not because of this 
fact but in spite of it. We may therefore 
see why many centers are so expressive of 
poverty and have so hard a struggle to 
make both ends meet. The few workers who 
are exceptional in their prosperity are 
largely those who have the spiritual cour¬ 
age to charge definite fees, or whose busi¬ 
ness includes other lines of endeavor such 
as publishing. 

The effect of the offering system is to 
afford a means for the rank and file to be 
unsystematic and dilatory in their financial 
attitude toward the work, and to avoid the 
expression of faith. Kegardless of ideals 
or benevolence on the part of workers the 
teaching that leads to these results con- 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 149 


tains no element of kindness, and the reac¬ 
tions are unsatisfactory to all concerned. 
The members who receive without making 
adequate return are by this process de¬ 
prived of the cultivation of that very 
spiritual stamina which it is the privilege 
of the metaphysical teacher to impart. 
Persons who receive the most are often 
the quickest to abandon those from whom 
they have received lavishly, and some¬ 
times even turn and rend them. It is 
a psychological and spiritual law that 
the human mind does not value that for 
which it omits to give a just compensation. 

Condemnation of those who ‘‘take money 
for healing’’ comes from the unthinking 
and often from those who, in smug secu¬ 
rity, draw generous salaries or receive in¬ 
comes from other sources, and who are 
quite devoid of any consciousness as to the 
spiritual courage required by the one who, 
having the gift of healing, seeks a reason¬ 
able living by unselfish consecration to the 
service of humanity. The opinions of such 
critics are necessarily valueless. 

Here and there may be found a meta- 


150 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


physical healer with the spiritual courage 
to require each patient to respond with a 
valuable consideration for services ren¬ 
dered, though that consideration consist 
(as it did in one case) of so simple a thing 
as the picking of wild flowers for the adorn¬ 
ment of a mantel. How else are we to 
teach the eternal fact that there is no lack 
and that God^s abundance is omnipresent? 
Such teachers and healers are among the 
few who are applying spiritual principles 
to finances to the benefit of all concerned, 
and they find that the principles may be 
taught and applied without ^‘commercial¬ 
izing^’ the noblest of professions. 

There are literally thousands of capable 
healers who are unable financially to main¬ 
tain themselves in the dignified way to 
which their abilities entitle them because 
of their unwillingness to charge—not for 
the healing—but for time spent in behalf 
of others. This in spite of the fact that an 
adequate return on the part of the patient 
tends to make him receptive to the healing, 
while an attitude of withholding retards it. 
It is no more spiritually unsound for a 
healer to be paid an agreed sum for his 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 151 

half hour of service than for a clerg 5 rman 
to he paid a definite salary for his twelve 
months^ services. We have the explicit 
statement of the Master in both cases that 
‘‘the laborer is worthy of his hire.’’ Let 
us remove from our minds the cobwebs in 
regard to these things. 

Is practical Christianity to be forever 
synonymous with poverty? The weakest 
point of the metaphysical movement is its 
finances. In this respect, judging from 
results, the Christian Scientists are far in 
advance of us. After studying the matter 
for many years it is my conviction that the 
solution of the entire problem lies in tith¬ 
ing, Workers should teach members to 
consecrate one-tenth of their income to 
their local spiritual work, setting this por¬ 
tion aside definitely in each instance be¬ 
fore making expenditures or investments. 
“Honor the Lord with thy substance, and 
with the first-fruits (not the last-fruits) of 
thine increase.” Thus would a system 
based on Principle express itself in the 
finances of workers and members alike. 
Many consecrated souls would adopt the 


152 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


system at once if the principle were pre¬ 
sented to them, and eventually the practice 
would become universal. Then not merely 
would students of spiritual truth thereby 
learn to avoid spiritual laziness in their 
finances but they would become definite 
and systematic. There would be faith ex¬ 
pressed, action in the now rather than pro¬ 
posed action in the future, and a balanced 
consciousness as to finances would be culti¬ 
vated as a matter of course. The universal 
testimony of all who practice tithing is that 
it results in prosperity, and there is ample 
Biblical authority for it. There is perhaps 
no body of people in the world that, against 
great odds, has become so collectively 
prosperous as the Mormon Church, which 
has always required its members to tithe. 
We should of course, never attempt to 
make tithing compulsory, but only teach 
the principle involved. 

If every local center in America would 
adopt this method of financing, our people 
would experience such a wave of pros¬ 
perity and spiritual uplift as the world has 
never seen. Neither workers nor members 
would be looked upon as objects of charity, 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 153 


and the work, having a dependable income, 
would take on a dignity, certainty and 
stability hitherto unknown, and quickly be¬ 
come an honor to its followers. Members 
would take a far greater interest, on the 
principle that, “Where your treasure is, 
there will your heart be also.’^ 

To consecrate to Spirit a definite and 
just portion of our income is to realize that 
all our resources are from the One Supply. 
Thus by recognition and acknowledgment 
we pave the way for continued abundance, 
keeping ourselves in touch with the Divine 
Source. This is finding the kingdom within 
and taking possession of it. None is so 
rich as he who lives out the life of the soul. 

The work of the centers is usually sus¬ 
tained under the law of giving and receiv¬ 
ing. There may or may not be fixed 
charges. At all events, workers give time, 
thought, lives, usually without measure. 
There is no charity when recipients re¬ 
spond adequately, and the disintegrating 
effect of trying to get something for noth¬ 
ing is thus avoided. 

People who put the compensation for 


154 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


spiritual services into the future, or make 
it in the nature of a contingent fee, lose out. 
To get results there must he reciprocity. 
What the patient or student pays is not 
merely an indication of his own good faith, 
but an acknowledgment of the reality to 
him of the principles and the healing. If 
we do not pay what we should pay we shall 
not get what we seek. Spiritual truth and 
healing become to us what we make them. 
If they cost so little that we do not know 
they cost us anything, then we get nothing. 
There must be positive, co-operative re¬ 
sponse on the part of the person to be 
assisted. It may be in the form of money 
payment, a personal service, or other valu¬ 
able consideration. 

Loss, a negative, means that we have 
withheld at some point. Not to correct this 
is to invite additional loss. Judas sym¬ 
bolized belief in loss, an idea that must 
necessarily be eradicated by his associates. 
Thus Matthias, meaning a gift, was substi¬ 
tuted in his place. 

The thought of lack is distinctively a 
feminine attribute, though men are by no 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 155 

means free from it. “We have no wine/’ 
coming from a woman, was the first plaint 
met by the Master when he started on his 
public ministry. Lack means discord with 
the law. The appearance of financial lack 
is no different in principle from the ap¬ 
pearance of any other lack, such as inhar¬ 
mony, injustice, illness, et cetera. It is 
never to be eliminated by regarding it as a 
reality, or in any way acknowledging it in 
thought. 

There is a law of increase and it is the 
law of use. Therefore become positive in 
some direction and use the talent you have. 

It is spiritually wrong to “Eob Peter to 
pay Paul,” yet perhaps no mistake is 
oftener made than this. The right pro¬ 
cedure, for instance, is to pay today what is 
rightfully due today, in faith, holding in 
thought that when tomorrow comes we 
shall have the wherewithal to meet tomor¬ 
row’s obligations. Some such thought as 
that, “Everything is paid today; when to¬ 
morrow comes I shall be able to meet its 
necessities,” builds a consciousness that 
creates resources as they are required. 
But we cannot reverse this idea with any 


156 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


plan that omits settling today’s debts 
in favor of tomorrow’s, any more than we 
can eat next week’s dinner today. 

We can spiritualize our finances by 
thinking of every dollar we receive or pay 
out as representing spiritual substance, 
therefore sound, pure and abundant. Bless 
it equally as from the One Source, knowing 
that ‘‘all that the Father hath is mine.” 

Neither fear_nqr love'money. Do not 
try to get everything as cheaply as pos¬ 
sible. Occasionally buy something that in¬ 
tuition calls for and pay its full price, in 
faith. Do not think opulence and act 
poverty, thus being “a house divided 
against itself.” Either we are in accord 
with the law, or we are not. Do not save 
with the thought that there will not be 
enough in the future. Look to no person. 
Let no mortal thought interfere with your 
prosperity, for God is with you in your 
thought of abundance. 

When you give, give not because of an¬ 
other’s lack, but because of your own con¬ 
sciousness of supply. Never agree with or 


THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF OPULENCE 157 


accept another’s belief in lack. Should you 
do so you would thus be using the creative 
processes of your mind to bring about a 
further consciousness of lack, possibly in 
your own life. There should be no such 
thing as charity. Do not become an object 
of charity by receiving without giving. 

In dealings with capital we are to bear in 
mind that there is a just and honest portion 
that must go to the financier. The ability 
to finance is at the basis of all business 
success, and there are financiers who are 
just and honest. The financier and the one 
financed should each remember that the 
other is entitled to just compensation. 

Spirituality stimulates prosperity. De¬ 
sire good for all, for love is the only law. 
and love’s reward is to be loving. Jeal¬ 
ousy, envy, covetousness—these are disin¬ 
tegrating, and mark the pathway of death. 
Work from inspiration, putting your heart 
into what you do. Cheerfulness is a mag¬ 
net, and right ideas keep us in the thought 
of abundance. 

Whatever your obstacle, the thing to 
bear in mind is that when you are deter¬ 
mined to let nothing stand between you and 


158 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


the solution of your problem you will find 
the solution. ‘‘Ye shall find me when ye 
seek me with your whole heart.’’ Nothing 
is promised to a divided mind. 


The ocean filled with joy—the atmosphere 
all joy! Joy, joy, in freedom, worship, love! 
Joy in the ecstasy of life; enough to merely 
be! enough to breathe. Joy, joy! All over joy! 

—Walt Whitman. 





CHAPTEK XI 


Joy 

The record of the most spiritual of the 
disciples reveals the marvelous message 
that the Master gave following the supper 
and shortly before his arrest. To perceive 
that he was talking about a consciousness 
which he desired to impart to his disciples 
assists greatly to an understanding of the 
message. Note these wonderful words: 

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto 
you . . . Let not your heart be troubled, 
neither let it be afraid. 

As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved 
you; continue ye in my love. . . . These 
things I command you, that ye love one another. 

These things have I spoken unto you, that 
my joy might remain in you, and that your 
joy might he full. . . . 

Your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man 
taketh from you. . . . Hitherto ye have asked 

161 


162 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


nothing in my name; ask, and ye shall receive, 
that your joy may be full. . . . 

The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom 
the Father will send in my name, he shall teach 
you all things, and bring all things to your re¬ 
membrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. 
. . . When the spirit of truth is come, he will 
guide you into all truth. ... Be of good cheer. 

— John^s Gospel. 

Much has been written about the patient 
Christ, the sorrowing Christ, the miracle- 
working Christ, the suffering Christ, et 
cetera, but comparatively little has been 
said about the joyous Christ. Doubtless 
this is partly due to the prevailing idea 
that Jesus was merely looking forward to 
the tomb. 

Because he was at times sorrowful does 
not indicate that he was habitually sorrow¬ 
ful, any more than that he was sometimes 
stern proves that he was habitually stern. 
One who could interest and bless little 
children must have had, not happiness 
merely, but genuine joy in his heart. His 
entire renunciation, in order that the world 
might have joy, of that which most men 
regard as indispensable is an indication 


JOY 


163 


that he knew the reality of joy, and that 
his realization of it must have been in the 
superlative. 

If there is such a thing as joy in the 
world, God is the Source of it. God being 
indefinite, intangible, infinite, impersonal 
and universal, how can he express joy ex¬ 
cept by means of human agency? Is it not 
apparent that humanity is indispensable 
for the expression of God’s attributes? It 
is therefore for some one to express the 
joy that is in the divine mind —why not 
you? 

Just as truly as the invisible corpora¬ 
tion—a fictitious entity—cannot function 
or in any way express itself except through 
its agents, so the invisible and universal 
Being, which is the Cause and Source of 
all things, cannot function or express itself 
on the human plane except through human 
beings—of which you are one. Thus we 
see why man is God individualized. You 
will increase in energy, power, love, in¬ 
telligence, health, prosperity and life just 
in proportion as you realize these facts, 
and appropriate, through recognition and 
acknowledgment, the attributes of your 


164 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


Source. The denial of truth, however, ex¬ 
cludes us from its power and benefits. 
Wrong denials put us in bondage. 

The joyous consciousness and its expres¬ 
sion come into manifestation by means of 
truth and the persistent vision. “Thy 
words were found and I did eat them, and 
they became the joy and rejoicing of my 
heart.’’ Eating, in symbolism, always 
means becoming identified with. We are 
to become saturated with truth. We have 
little joy if we have as yet failed to obtain 
the truth that frees. 

It has been said that the soul is all joy. 
What could be more reasonable ? We know 
that the person with the joyous heart is 
the possessor of a subtle enchantment that 
is contagious and beloved of men. Joy is 
contagious, healing and magnetic, drawing 
to itself great riches. 

The joy that is promised is no second¬ 
hand, reflected or transitory joy. It is the 
kind of joy that the Master of the ages 
himself realized—absolute, permanent and 
unkillable. The promises are that “your 
joy shall remain,” and “your joy no man 


JOY 


165 


taketh from yon/’ What conld he more 
transcendent ? 

It is possible to be so established in joy 
that bad news cannot disturb us. Why 
should it not be so? ‘‘He that keeps the 
joyous heart while affairs go contrary has 
the scepter of divine law” that compels 
triumph. “He that is free shall be free 
indeed. ’ ’ 

We may not personally know what cos¬ 
mic consciousness is, but there are persons 
in this present age who know the joy and 
consciousness of spiritual victory. 

The law of joy is the law of keeping the 
upward vision, of harkening; 

Harken, harken! 

God speaketh in thy soul, 

Saying, 0 thou that movest 
With feeble steps across this earth of mine. 
To break beside the fount thy golden bowl 
And spill its purple wine— 

Look up to heaven and see how like a scroll 
My right hand holdeth thine immortality 
In an eternal grasping. 

— Mrs. Browning. 

“Fount” is the eternal, the Self of us. 


166 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


“Golden bowP’ is the outer, the personal, 
that must be erased. “Wine’^ is inspira¬ 
tion. 

The one thing that causes joy is truth. 
Therefore let us get truth at any price. 


SELF-PERFECTING METHODS 


In order to cultivate a positive and crea¬ 
tive consciousness it is essential that we 
contemplate truth, and the best way to do 
this is to saturate our thought with state¬ 
ments pertaining to The Absolute. We do 
not have to make anything—indeed, we 
cannot if we would—it already is. 

To eliminate a belief in sickness there¬ 
fore we dwell in consciousness upon such 
statements regarding health as are true 
of God—God within us. Correspondingly 
with poverty and prosperity, failure and 
success, et cetera, letting the affirmative 
realization be substituted for the negative. 
Systematic meditation and concentration 
speed the process. 

The following exercises are intended to 
meet universal requirements. The in¬ 
structions given are flexible, and no one is 
necessarily expected to conform to all of 
them. It is presumed that the student will 


168 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


devote to them such time as is available, 
and accomplish as much as possible. A 
large amount of time will not necessarily 
be required, but the greater the effort the 
more rapid the progress. The directions 
are intended for the average busy person 
engaged in a daily occupation. 

It is advisable to set aside from three 
to five periods of fifteen minutes each, 
daily, for the concentration exercises, at 
more or less regular intervals. 

It is possible to practice concentration 
while on a street car, or even while walking 
to and from one’s place of business. At all 
events, do not give way to the suggestion 
that because you cannot conform literally 
to the instructions that therefore it is use¬ 
less to make an attempt. Wait for nothing. 
Begin right where you are. Do your best 
and a better best will come. These exer¬ 
cises, remember, are creative. 

The concentration exercises are based on 
formulas known as Denials and Affirma¬ 
tions. Denials are for the purpose of 
cleansing the mind of ideas that are untrue 
of the Beal Self. The affirmations are to 
fill in in place of what has thus been elimi- 


SELF-PERFECTING METHODS 


169 


nated, until by degrees there comes a real¬ 
ization of eternal truth. 

Begin with the following: 

“I AM the master of my fate; 

I AM the captain of my soul.’’ 

For concentration it is desirable to be 
in a quiet, well-lighted room, alone. Sit 
in an ordinary chair—a dining chair will 
do, but not a rocker. Place hands, palms 
down, in lap, one on each leg. It is helpful 
to shut your eyes. Close the door of your 
thinker to outside ideas or proceedings. 
Still the reasoning mind and decisively re¬ 
ject adverse suggestions or arguments. 

Silently or audibly repeat rather slowly: 

I AM the master of my fate; 

I AM the captain of my soul. 

If an interfering idea enters the mind, 
reject but do not resist it (no matter how 
often it comes) and proceed with the con¬ 
centration. 

Kealize that it is the I AM—the true, 
divine Self of you—that is thinking the 
words and the ideas they symbolize. 


170 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


Avoid mere meclianical repetitions. 
Quietly put your soul into the meaning of 
each word, but do not become strenuous or 
mentally tense. If this seems unavoidable 
cease your efforts for the time being and 
resume them later. 

Should you experience difficulty in keep¬ 
ing your thought on the formula it will 
assist to proceed as follows, advancing the 
emphasis with each repetition: 

I AM the master of my fate. 

I AM the master of my fate. 

I AM the master of my fate. 

I AM the master of my fate. 

This process tends to hold the mind to 
its task and not allow it to wander. 

Mind-wandering clearly indicates need 
of practice in concentration. By this in¬ 
terior discipline you are collecting scat¬ 
tered thought forces and focussing them 
in accordance with your will. This may be 
likened to gathering the rays of a sunbeam 
with a burning-glass and concentrating 
them at a point until there is sufficient heat 
to cause a blaze. 


SELF-PERFECTING METHODS 


171 


There can be no hard and fast rnle as 
to how many days yon should limit your 
concentration to the above or any other 
formula. The values of this formula could 
hardly be exhausted in a week or even a 
month, but should you feel impelled to 
change to another there is no reason to the 
contrary. 

In making denials it is best to use hut 
one at a time, following with one or more 
affirmatives. 

Following are Denials and Affirmations 
some of which have been of priceless 
assistance to many persons. Those that 
appeal to you most strongly will be of 
most value in your individual case. It 
is better thoroughly to hnow and use 
one formula than to scatter one^s effort 
among many. But should the one you have 
been using seem to become stale you would 
better change to another. Memorize the 
formulas you use. 



FORMULAS 


Centered and established in the One 
Perfect Mind, I AM undisturbed by the 
falsities without. 

Nothing stands between me and my own. 
I now express my true, divine Self. 

I AM obedient to Spirit in all things. 

I AM still, that I may know. I listen, 
and 1 obey, 

I erase all personality. I AM established 
in divine identity. 

I can of ihyself do nothing; The Father 
in me doeth the works. 

I AM ‘ ‘ under grace, and not under law. ’ ^ 

There is no satisfaction outside of God. 
Therefore all satisfaction is of and in the 
soul. There is no lack. 

I AM 

I can (and by the grace of God) 

1 will be victorious. 

There is no duality. God is all there is. 

I AM negative to God only. I bow ever 
to the divine will. 

All the power there is is now devoted to 
my prosperity. I AM not afraid. 

173 


174 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


I accept the divine idea of perfection. 
Its life and power are my life and power. 

I AM now in my right place, doing my 
right work. I now express my true, divine 
Self. 

I fear no evil. I resist no evil. I deny 
all evil. There is only One Power and 
Presence. 

I deny all heredity. I deny birth. God 
is my Father. God is my Mother. I in¬ 
herit peace, poise, purity and power, from 
God only. 

I AM THAT I AM. (I will to be what 
I will to be.) Therefore I will to be vic¬ 
torious. 

I AM He! I AM He! I AM He! I 
AM that blissful One. I AM the Witness. 
I AM the Knower. I have neither birth 
nor death, father nor mother, beginning 
nor end. I AM Spirit, Spirit, Spirit! time¬ 
less, tireless, boundless, limitless. Omni¬ 
present, Omnipotent, Omniscient! I AM 
bound by neither pain nor pleasure, sorrow 
nor joy, vice nor virtue. I dwell in bliss 
eternal. I AM free! 


— From the Oriental. 


FORMULAS 


175 


I AM greater than anything that con¬ 
fronts me. God is my eternal satisfaction. 

Steadfastly facing Thee, there is nothing 
to fear for there is no power to hurt. 

I believe in the absolute power of non- 
resistance. 

I seek the approval of Spirit only. I 
hear the voice of Spirit only. 

The Intelligence that I AM knows the 
nothingness of this appearance, * and now 
dissolves the illusion from mind. 

The cleansing, purifying, vitalizing, heal¬ 
ing power of the Holy Spirit is now per¬ 
meating and penetrating my entire being. 
I AM a new creature in Christ Jesus. 

I AM one with the life, substance, power 
and intelligence of God. 

Infinite Spirit now works through me to 
will and to do that which ought to be done 
by me. 

I AM in absolute harmony with the law 
of my being. The law of my being is health, 
peace, joy, prosperity, love, life, victory. 

I AM in authority. I say to this idea, 
‘‘Go,’’ and it goes; I say to that idea, 
“Come,” and it comes. 


176 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


Spirit gives me perfect understanding. 

The substance of wealth is within me. 
I AM identified with the law of financial 
equilibrium. 

I demand of the Exhaustless Whole all 
the substance and supply I can receive and 
appropriate for these present require¬ 
ments. 

I give thanks that thou, 0 God within 
me, hast now manifested as the answer to 
all my desires. 

Health is for me. Success is for me. 
Victory is for me. 

I AM receptive to an increasing con¬ 
sciousness of God within, for I can only 
express as much of God as I AM con¬ 
scious of. 

I Am Almighty God’s innocent and use¬ 
ful and prosperous man, and there are none 
in all this universe to think or speak or act 
against me, but only for me, now and for¬ 
evermore. Amen. 

(The above affirmation was adopted by a man 
who had lost all his property. He went to 
another city, opened an office, and during his 
first year took in $85,000.) 


FORMULAS 


177 


I perceive the spirit of the Christ teach¬ 
ing, that “all that the Father hath is 
mine.’’ 

I AM slave to nothing and master of 
everything. This day is a day for victory. 
I go forth clothed with divine power. Suc¬ 
cess crowns my every effort. 

The Omnipresent Spirit of success con¬ 
stantly goes before me and makes easy the 
way. 

Jesns Christ now frees me from all 
bondage. 


; w ■ ’ ' /. 





A STATEMENT OF BELIEF 


I believe that I AM, that I always have 
been, that I always will be. 

I believe that God is the only creator, 
and that therefore there is no cause of 
“evil.’’ 

I believe that God is Omnipresent, and 
that therefore there is no place for evil. 

I believe that God is Omnipotent, and 
that therefore there is no power in evil or 
the ‘ ‘ devil, ’ ’ however much I may hitherto 
have judged by appearances to the con¬ 
trary. 

I believe that evil, including sin, is the 
unknown and unknowable, and that God 
only is the knowable. 

As truly as that darkness is the absence 
of light I believe that evil is simply our 
belief in the absence of good, that is, God. 

I believe that the only unforgiveness is 
in the consciousness, and that we are for¬ 
given when we perceive that we are for¬ 
given—a psychological process, “under 
grace.” 


179 


180 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


I believe that the true Self of man is 
divine, always was and always will be di¬ 
vine, however much obscured in conscious¬ 
ness is his realization of that fact. 

I believe that God is not emerging out 
of imperfection into perfection, but that 
each man’s consciousness of his own in¬ 
herent divinity is constantly unfolding. 

I believe that no progress is made in 
spiritual consciousness by studying loss, 
lack, weakness, failure, ignorance, disap¬ 
pointment, poverty, sickness, fear, sin, evil 
or death, but that spiritual unfoldment is 
possible only by the contemplation of God 
as power, substance, love and life and the 
Source of supply, success, satisfaction, 
health, faith, wisdom and goodness, and 
claiming these to be true of our Eeal Self, 
thus bringing them forth as realities. 

I believe that hell, the day of judgment, 
and heaven are a continual performance, 
now, ‘‘The kingdom of God is —” not to 
he, I believe that each of us is experi¬ 
encing these daily as truly as we ever can 
experience them. Hell is the result of 
“whatsoever is not of faith.” Judgment 
is the process of discriminating between 


A STATEMENT OF BELIEF 


181 


the false and the true, the ^‘evil” and the 
good, or it is the correction of seeing the 
true in the false and the false in the 
true. Heaven is the realization of that 
faith which rejects the error-thought of 
mere reason (and sometimes even of con¬ 
science) and acts upon the Truth of In¬ 
tuition, the Christ mind, and which is often 
unaccountable, seemingly unreasonable, 
and often at variance with precedent. 

I believe that God being all there is — 
all the power, substance, intelligence, love, 
life—there is absolutely nothing to fear. 

I believe that the keynote of all spiritual 
teaching and realization is always in unity 
and never in separation. A belief in sepa¬ 
ration from God is like belief in unforgive¬ 
ness—it exists only in man’s consciousness, 
never in fact. 

I believe that man gets nothing because 
of having earned it or deserved it, but only 
by being receptive to Truth does he come 
into the consciousness of his absolute one¬ 
ness with all that the Father is and has, 
and this is his ^‘salvation.” 

I believe that a man’s consciousness de¬ 
termines his state of health, financial status 



182 


CONSCIOUSNESS 


and environment, as well as the events of 
his daily life. 

I believe that the Bible is the spiritual 
natural history of man, the story of his 
ongoing from the consciousness of the first 
Adam to that of the ‘‘second Adam,’’ 
Jesus Christ. 

I believe that Jesus Christ emphasized 
healing equally with preaching, that he 
condemned acts but never individuals, and 
that substantially the only doctrine he 
preached was the power of the name, Jesus 
Christ. 

I believe that the ultimate goal of man 
is not a post mortem existence amid literal 
pearly gates and golden streets, but a state 
of consciousness in which he realizes his 
absolute and perfect identity with Uni¬ 
versal Spirit. 

I believe that God is Absolute Intelli¬ 
gence, Absolute Substance, Absolute 
Power, Absolute Love and Absolute Life, 
and that to contemplate Him as less than 
these is to make and worship a false god, 
and that our at-one-ment is to be the final 
attainment of conscious oneness with all 
that God is, 


The End 


INTUITION 

ITS OFFICE, ITS LAWS, ITS PSYCHOLOGY 
ITS TRIUMPHS AND ITS DIVINITY 

By WALTER NEWELL WESTON, LL M. 

Author of CONSCIOUSNESS, A Study of the Absolute, etc. 
Price Two Dollars Postpaid 

T his book deals with that sense or faculty in 
the human mind by which man knows (or 
may know) facts of which he would otherwise not 
be cognizant, facts which might not be apparent 
to him through process of reason or so-called 
scientific proof. This faculty is called intuition. 
The possibilities of training the sense are limit¬ 
less, and when so trained, man is enabled to 
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realms of discernment, wisdom, joy, realization 
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INTUITION is the faculty by which, if we 
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The pages of INTUITION bespeak a wide reading 
public. All the world loves to be intuitive. All the 
world believes in intuition. We cannot read or hear too 
much about it. Blessings on the book! 

—Emma Curtis Hopkins, 


I have been reading INTUITION with pleasure and 
profit. It is very seldom that I find time to actually 
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enjoying every word of it. It is very practical and 
interesting .—Charles Fillmore. 

I have received the book, INTUITION, and I must 
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CONSCIOUSNESS 

A STUDY OF THE ABSOLUTE 

By WALTER NEWELL WESTON, LLM. 

Author of INTUITION, Etc. 

Price Two Dollars Postpaid 

Both CONSCIOUSNESS and INTUITION are 
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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX 

A LECTURE TO YOUNG MEN 

By WALTER NEWELL WESTON, LLM. 

Author of INTUITION, CONSCIOUSNESS, Etc. 

The practical application of High Truth to a most vital 
topic. This intimate lecture should be in the possession of 
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evolutionary mastery of mind and body by self-perfecting 
methods, leading to health and long life. Sensible, helpful, 
healing and inspirational. 

Sold only in manuscript form and sent first class mail. 
Price, $2.00 postpaid. 

In order to have either book or lecture sent to your address 
it is not necessary to send any money in advance. Simply pay 
postman $2.00, plus postage, on its arrival. Money back if 
desired. Address: W. N. WESTON, Box 261, Grand Central 
Terminal P. O., New York, N. Y. 







f 



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